Dependability Aspects of Autonomic Cooperative Computing Systems

Abstract

As the number of globally interconnected devices has become substantial, the resulting systems are getting prone to configuration issues and dependability becomes one of their key characteristics. Following the rationale behind self-management in autonomic computing, the main trend is to put emphasis on the ability of a computer system to self-configure, self-optimise, self-heal, and self-protect without any explicit need for external human intervention. This is crucial for complexity reasons, as a complete automation appears to be the only reasonable and justified way forward. This paper advocates for the possibility of adjusting the level of dependability with the aid of Autonomic Cooperative Behaviour, expressed through cooperative data processing and computing. In particular, devices may improve the related system robustness by sharing their computational resources for the purposes of cooperative data transmission. Autonomic system design, in turn, is expected to guarantee system stability and scalability, especially in the case of very large set-ups composed of a significant number of devices exposing such Autonomic Cooperative Behaviour simultaneously. For this reason, a properly adjusted overlay autonomic network architecture needs to be employed so the overall system may be controlled by specific Decision Making Entities interacting among themselves and operating with the aid of control loops.