| To be truly autonomic, a computing system needs to "know and understand itself"—and comprise components that also possess a system identity. Since a "system" can exist at many levels, an autonomic system will need detailed knowledge of its components, current status, operating environment, and ultimate capacity, and of all connections with other systems. It will need to know the extent of its "owned" resources, those it can borrow, buy, or lend, and which ones can be shared or should be isolated. As shown in Figure 1.4, autonomic computing has four basic elements: self-configuring, self-healing, self-optimizing, and self-protecting. Figure 1.4. The four aspects of autonomic computing: self-configuring, self-healing, self-optimizing, and self-protecting. 
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