Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis in Autonomous Computing: A Study on Independent and Coordinated Self-Management.

摘要

In this dissertation, we focus on the problem of self-management in distributed systems. In this context, we propose a new methodology for reactive self-management based on multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA). The general structure of the proposed methodology is extracted from the commonalities of the former well-established approaches that are applied in other problem domains. The main novelty of this work, however, lies in the usage of MCDA during the reaction processes in the context of the two problems that the proposed methodology is applied to.;In order to provide a detailed analysis and assessment of this new approach, we have used the proposed methodology to design distributed autonomous agents that can provide self-management in two outstanding problems. These two problems also represent the two distinct ways in which the methodology can be applied to self-management problems. These two cases are: 1) independent self management, and 2) coordinated self-management. In the simulation case study regarding independent self-management, the methodology is used to design and implement a distributed resource consolidation manager for clouds, called IMPROMPTU. In IMPROMPTU, each autonomous agent is attached to a unique physical machine in the cloud, where it manages resource consolidation independently from the rest of the autonomous agents. On the other hand, the simulation case study regarding coordinated self-management focuses on the problem of adaptive routing in mobile ad hoc networks (MANET). The resulting system carries out adaptation through autonomous agents that are attached to each MANET node in a coordinated manner. In this context, each autonomous node agent expresses its opinion in the form of a decision regarding which routing algorithm should be used given the perceived conditions. The opinions are aggregated through coordination in order to produce a final decision that is to be shared by every node in the MANET.;Although MCDA has been previously considered within the context of artificial intelligence---particularly with respect to algorithms and frameworks that represent different requirements for MCDA problems, to the best of our knowledge, this dissertation outlines a work where MCDA is applied for the first time in the domain of these two problems that are represented as simulation case studies.