Self-Managing Distributed Systems

Current self-healing systems are built from “convergent” actions that only make repairs when necessary. Using an algebraic model of system administration, we challenge the traditional notion of “convergence” and propose a stronger definition with improved algebraic properties. Under the new definition, the structure of traditional configuration management systems is a natural emergent property of the algebraic model. We discuss the impact of the new definition, as well as the changes required in current convergent tools in order to conform to the new definition.

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