Self-Management: The Solution to Complexity or Just Another Problem?

Traditionally, network and system management are manually controlled processes. It usually takes one or more human operators to manage all aspects of a dynamically evolving computing system. Several trends shaping the development of IT infrastructures have aggravated network and system management. This leads to the question of how we can administer systems of this complexity adequately. This question has stimulated a large interest in self-management technologies - technologies that help systems autonomously control themselves. It's not realistic for human operators to maintain control over a system that consists of thousands of networked computers, mobile clients, and numerous application servers and databases. We must redefine human operators' roles so that instead of being involved in the decision process in an interactive and tightly coupled fashion, operators define general goals and policies for system control. So self-management is the solution only if we can first solve several open problems.