Advances in technologies have made an unprecedented range and variety of computing resources available. A number of fields have sought to take maximum advantage of these resources, with grid computing being one of the more successful. However, the increasing complexity of these heterogeneous, distributed systems has compromised users’ ability to manage them effectively. Autonomic computing, which seeks to hide the complexity of systems by making them self-managing, offers a potential solution. In order to produce autonomic managers for grid systems, realistic input is required for development and testing. This thesis proposes a model that can be used to provide simulated input, utilizing existing system logs. The simulator adheres to the standards and specifications recognized in both autonomic and grid services, and provides the detailed, accurate information that is required by developers.

Web applications have become increasingly popular in recent years. They are widely used in security-critical areas, such as financial, medical, and military systems. Meanwhile, the number and sophistication of attacks against web applications have increased rapidly. It is important for organizations and companies to add security functions to existing web application servers in order to maintain the confidentiality of critical information. One common approach to protect web systems is to build an Intrusion Detection and Prevention System (IDPS). In this thesis, we propose an IDPS framework to detect and prevent web attacks by employing Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) and Autonomic Computing (AC) technologies. This framework can also be used to discover whether a web application under protection has abilities to prevent certain web attacks itself. We developed a prototyping tool to implement the functionality of this framework partially. We evaluated this tool on two Java web applications to detect and prevent Cross Scripting Site (XSS) and Structured Query Language (SQL) Injection, which are two of the most common web attacks. The experimental results show that the prototyping tool based on AOP and AC technologies can be applied to detect and prevent the two common web attacks effectively.

Self-adaptive and self-managing systems optimize their own behaviour according to high-level objectives and constraints. One way for human administrators to effectively specify goals for such optimization problems is using policies. Over the past decade, researchers produced various approaches, models and techniques for policy specification in different areas including distributed systems, communication networks, web services, autonomic computing, and cloud computing. Research challenges range from characterizing policies for ease of specification in particular application domains to categorizing policies for achieving good solution qualities for particular algorithmic techniques. The contributions of this thesis are threefold. Firstly, we give a mathematical formulation for each of the three policy types, action, goal and utility function policies, introduced in the policy framework by Kephart and Walsh. In particular, we introduce a first precise characterization of goal policies for optimization problems. Secondly, this thesis introduces a mathematical framework that adds structure to the underlying optimization problem for different types of policies. Structure is added either to the objective function or the constraints of the optimization problem. These mathematical structures, imposed on the underlying problem, progressively increase the quality of the solutions obtained when using the greedy optimization technique. Thirdly, we show the applicability of our framework through case studies by analyzing several optimization problems encountered in self-adaptive and self-managing systems, such as resource allocation, quality of service management, and Service Level Agreement (SLA) profit optimization to provide quality guarantees for their solutions. Our approach combines the algorithmic results by Edmonds, Fisher et al., and Mestre, and the policy framework of Kephart and Walsh. Our characterization and approach will help designers of self-adaptive and self-managing systems formulate optimization problems, decide on algorithmic strategies based on policy requirements, and reason about solution qualities. / Graduate / 0984

Zugl.: Braunschweig, Techn. Univ., Diss., 2008

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of St Andrews, May 2010.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Montana State University--Bozeman, 2007. / Typescript. Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Michael J. Oudshoorn. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 155-163).

Zugl.: Berlin, Humboldt-Univ., Diss., 2008

O Gerenciamento Autonômico de Redes é uma visão que utiliza princípios da Computação Autonômica para o Gerenciamento de Redes. Além disso, algum grau de descentralização é necessário para habilitar capacidades autonômicas completas. Uma alternativa interessante de infraestrutura para essa união é a utilização de overlays Peer-to-Peer (P2P). No entanto, a consistência do estado dos dados de gerenciamento entre os peers é um desafio importante. Mecanismos tradicionais para manter a consistência desses estados são implementados por meio de centralização, o que desperdiça algumas propriedades desejáveis de abordagens P2P. Em contraste com esses mecanismos, é proposto um mecanismo distribuído, escalável e robusto para a manutenção da consistência do estado dos dados de gerenciamento pela introdução de funcionalidades de Manutenção da Verdade Multiagente. Além disso, são propostas estratégias de comunicação para prover suporte a essas funcionalidades. São apresentados também estudos de caso para ilustrar as possibilidades da proposta: o gerenciamento cooperativo de falhas em enlaces Ethernet em provedores de serviços e a ativação distribuída de políticas de gerenciamento de redes. Experimentos simulados são realizados a fim de verificar as propriedades de escalabilidade e robustez da presente proposta. / Autonomic network management is a vision that brings Autonomic Computing principles to Network Management. Besides, it is necessary some level of decentralization to enable broad autonomic capabilities. An interesting alternative of infrastructure for this union is the utilization of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) overlays. However, the consistency of state of management data among peers is an important challenge. Traditional mechanisms to maintain consistency of these states are supported by some centralization which wastes some desirable properties of P2P approach. In contrast to these mechanisms, a distributed, scalable and robust mechanism to maintain the consistency of state of management data is proposed through the introduction of Multi-Agent Truth Maintenance features. Besides, communication strategies are proposed to support these features. Case studies are presented to show possibilities of this proposal: cooperative fault management of Ethernet links in service providers and distributed activation of network management policies. Simulated experiments are performed to verify the scalability and robustness properties of this proposal.

Estudos recentes sobre padrões de gerenciamento em redes de produção apontam que apenas um pequeno e estático conjunto de dados de gerenciamento tende a ser utilizado. Eles também revelam que o fluxo de dados de gerenciamento é relativamente constante e que as operações em uso para a comunicação agente-gerente são reduzidas a alguns, as vezes obsoletos, conjuntos. Essa realidade demonstra uma expressiva falta de progresso nos processos de monitoração, levando em consideração o seu papel estratégico e o potencial, por exemplo, para antecipar e prevenir falhas, perdas de desempenho e problemas de segurança em redes, serviços e aplicações. Uma das razões para tal limitação recai no fato de que o operador, ainda considerado um elemento fundamental no loop de controle, já não suporta o rápido crescimento tanto do tamanho quanto da heterogeneidade de ambos os componentes de software e de hardware, os quais constituem os modernos sistemas de computação em rede. Essa forma de "administrador no loop de gerenciamento" certamente dificulta a realização de adaptações oportunas nos processos de monitoração. Para resolver este problema, esse trabalho apresenta um modelo para monitoração adaptativa de redes, serviços e aplicações inspirado na abordagem de aprendizado por reforço. O modelo é analisado por meio da implementação de um protótipo de um elemento autonômico, o qual baseia-se em valores históricos, muitas vezes inesperados, obtidos de objetos gerenciados. Por meio do raciocínio sobre essas informações, o elemento autonômico dinamicamente amplia ou restringe o conjunto de objetos gerenciados a ser monitorado. / Recent investigations of management patterns in production networks suggest that just a small and static set of management data tends to be used, the flow of management data is relatively constant, and the operations in use for manager-agent communication are reduced to a few, sometimes obsolete set. This reality demonstrates an impressive lack of progress of monitoring processes, taking into account their strategic role and potential, for example, to anticipate and prevent faults, performance bottlenecks, and security problems. One of the key reasons for such limitation relies on the fact that operators, who still are a fundamental element of the monitoring control loop, can no longer handle the rapidly increasing size and heterogeneity of both hardware and software components that comprise modern networked computing systems. This form of human-in-the-loop management certainly hampers timely adaptation of monitoring processes. To tackle this issue, this work presents a model, inspired by the reinforcement learning theory, for adaptive network, service and application monitoring. The model is analyzed through a prototypical implementation of an autonomic element, which, based on historical and even unexpected values retrieved for management objects, dynamically widens or restricts the set of management objects to be monitored.

Les systèmes distribués modernes à large-échelle évoluent dans des contextes variables soumis à de nombreux aléas auxquels ils doivent s'adapter dynamiquement. Dans ce cadre, l'informatique autonome se propose de réduire les interventions humaines lentes et coûteuses, en leur préférant l'auto-gestion. Elle repose avant tout sur une description adéquate de ses composants, de leurs interactions et des différents aspects ou topologies qu'il peut adopter. Diverses approches de modélisation ont étés proposées dans la littérature, se concentrant en général sur certains du système dynamique et ne permettent ainsi pas de répondre à chacune des problématiques inhérentes à l'auto-gestion. Cette thèse traite de la modélisation basée graphes des systèmes dynamiques et de son adéquation pour la mise en œuvre des quatre propriétés fondamentales de l'informatique. Elle propose quatre principales contributions théoriques et appliquées. La première est une méthodologie pour la construction et la caractérisation générative de transformations correctes par construction dont l'application préserve nécessairement la correction du système. La seconde contribution consiste en une extension des systèmes de réécriture de graphe permettant de représenter, mettre à jour, évaluer et paramétrer les caractéristiques d'un système aisément et efficacement. Une étude expérimentale extensive révèle un net gain d'efficacité vis à vis de méthodes classiques. Les deux dernières contributions s'articulent autour de l'élaboration de deux modules de gestions visant : (1) des requêtes de traitement d'événements complexes et (2) tout système Machine-à-Machine se conformant au standard ETSI M2M. / Modern, large-scale systems are deployed in changing environments. They must dynamically adapt to context changes. In this scope, autonomic computing aims at reducing slow and costly human interventions, by building self-managed systems. Self-adaptability of a system is primarily based on a suitable description of its components, their interactions and the various states it can adopt. Various modeling approaches have been elaborated. They usually focus on some aspects or properties of dynamic systems and do not tackle each of self-management's requirements. This manuscript deals with graph-based representations of dynamic systems and their suitability for the implementation of autonomic computing's four fundamental properties : self-optimization, self-protection, self-healing and self-configuring. This thesis offers four principal theoretical and applied contributions. The first one is a methodology for the construction and generative characterization of transformations correct by construction whose application necessarily preserves a system's correctness. The second one consists in an extension of graph rewriting systems allowing to easily and efficiently represent, update, evaluate and configure a system's characteristics. An experimental study reveals a significant efficiency gain with regard to classical methods. The two lasts contribution are articulated around the design of two autonomic managers driving: (1) complex events processing requests and (2) any Machine-to-Machine system complying to the ETSI M2M2 standard.