Autonomic computing is a new approach to computer and systems management. The purpose is to reduce the cost of managing the IT infrastructure, and at the same time, increase service.
The goals autonomic computing is to reduce the cost of service through far more automated and efficient use of available resources and capacity. This includes dynamic resource allocation, self-healing hardware and software, and setting service-level agreements according to business needs. Autonomic computing have four basic value propositions that can be stated as business goals:
Reduced costs— achieved by better and more efficient resource usage, and by reduced system-management (labor) costs.
Improved service levels— achieved by dynamic adjustments or tuning of IT services.
Increased agility—achieved by rapid provisioning of new services or resources and scaling of established services.
Less complexity— by self-managing and intelligent decision making in IT operations much of the complexity is managed without human intervention.
There are eight key elements of an autonomic-computing system:
Knowledge of itself, in terms of resources and capabilities
An autonomic system has knowledge of its components, status, capacity and connections with other systems to govern itself.
The ability to configure and reconfigure itself
The autonomic system is capable of configuring itself and making dynamic adjustments to that configuration as its environment changes.
The ability to continuously self-optimize itself
The autonomic system monitors its constituent parts and fine-tunes workflow to achieve established system goals.
Self-healing capabilities
The autonomic system must be able to discover problems or potential problems and find alternate ways of using resources or reconfigure the system to keep functioning smoothly.
Self-protection capabilities
The autonomic system must be able to protect itself from various types of internal/external attacks and failures to maintain overall system security and integrity.
The ability to discover knowledge of its environment and context—and to adapt accordingly
The autonomic system must be able to understand how to best interact with neighboring systems, using available resources and adapting to its environment.
The ability to function in a heterogeneous computing environment
The autonomic system must be able to function in a heterogeneous world—in other words, it cannot be a proprietary solution.
The ability to anticipate and adapt to user needs
The autonomic system must be able to meet the goals of the business without involving the user for data collection, analysis, and decision-making.
The fundamental process is to have autonomic systems that can enforce your computing policies and service-level agreements through the use of intelligent hardware and software. Maintenance and processing tasks are automated and computing resources are dynamically allocated for maximum efficiencies.
