Vijay Machiraju

Automated SLA Monitoring for Web Services

SLA monitoring is difficult to automate as it would need precise and unambiguous specification and a customizable engine that collects the right measurement, models the data and evaluates the SLA at certain times or when certain events happen. Also most of the SLA neglect client side measurement or restrict SLAs to measurements based only on server side. In a cross-enterprise scenario like web services it will be important to obtain measurements at multiple sites and to guarantee SLAs on them. In this article we propose an automated and distributed SLA monitoring engine.

Automated policy-based resource construction in utility computing environments

A utility environment is dynamic in nature. It has to deal with a large number of resources of varied types, as well as multiple combinations of those resources. By embedding operator and user level policies in resource models, specifications of composite resources may be automatically generated to meet these multiple and varied requirements. The paper describes a model for automated policy-based construction of complex environments. We pose the policy problem as a goal satisfaction problem that can be addressed using a constraint satisfaction formulation. We show how a variety of construction policies can be accommodated by the resource models during resource composition. We are implementing this model in a prototype that uses CIM as the underlying resource model and exploring issues that arise as a result of that implementation.

Web Services Management Network: an overlay network for federated service management

We introduce the architecture, object model, components, and protocols of a management overlay for federated service management, called Web Services Management Network (WSMN). WSMN targets management of Web services that interact across administrative domains, and therefore typically involves multiple stakeholders (examples are business-to-business, service provider interconnections, help desks). The architecture is based on (implicit) SLA to formalize relations across domains. It relies on a network of communicating service intermediaries, each such intermediary being a proxy positioned between the service and the outside world. WSMN also exchanges control information to agree on what to monitor, where to monitor, and whom to provide visibility.

Quartermaster - a resource utility system

Utility computing is envisioned as the future of enterprise IT environments. Achieving utility computing is a daunting task, because enterprise users have diverse and complex needs. In this paper we describe quartermaster, an integrated set of tools that addresses some of these needs. Quartermaster supports the entire lifecycle of computing tasks - including design, deployment, operation, and decommissioning of each task. Although individual components of this lifecycle have been addressed in earlier work, quartermaster integrates them in a unified framework using model-based automation. All tools within quartermaster are integrated using models based on the common information model (CIM), an industry-standard model from the distributed management task force (DMTF). The paper discusses the quartermaster implementation, and describes two case studies using quartermaster.

Automated generation of resource configurations through policies

Resource management systems have been attempting to undertake automated configuration management. Automated configuration management involves considering user requirements, operator constraints and technical constraints of the system to create a suitable configuration, and to create a workflow to deploy it. In this article we propose a policy-based model that we have used for automating these configuration management aspects.

Message tracking in SOAP-based Web services

As Web services become more prevalent, the nature of electronic transactions on the Internet changes from simple browser-to-business clicks to an orchestrated flow of messages between cross-enterprise services. Consequently, more than one service could participate in the federated execution of a single transaction. In such cases, the problem of end-to-end management becomes very important. The inherent cross-enterprise or distributed nature of the problem, security of information exchanged, and the complexity in correlating related messages into a single transaction make this problem challenging. We present an approach to track and correlate messages between Web services that are part of a single transaction. We do this by proposing management information exchange agreements between service providers, and a distributed message tracking algorithm that is executed within each service provider. We also explain the techniques for realizing our solution in the case of Web services that communicate using the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP).

Supporting application quality of service in shared resource pools

Dividing an applications workload demands to better manage resource capacity.

Towards generic application auto-discovery

The increasing complexity of enterprise applications, the expanding number of networked machines, and the rapid deployment of Internet-based business applications (E-commerce), emphasize the importance and value of application management. One of the main problems in current application management products is the amount of time and effort needed to install and customize them. Application auto-discovery is a key technology for solving this problem. In this paper, we present a generic approach to application auto-discovery along with some examples. Our approach is to create a model-based discovery engine that is driven by an application template model. While the application template model captures the variation from one application to another, the auto-discovery engine uses sophisticated mechanisms such as scoping to execute an invariant auto-discovery process.

Semantic Analysis of E-Business Operations

An e-business infrastructure is comprised of a large number of business processes that are exposed through web services. To manage such an infrastructure, it is necessary for business managers to be able to observe their e-business operations in greater detail. In particular, a framework and a tool is required that allows business users to define qualitative and quantitative metrics, depending on their own (business or IT) goals. Once metrics have been defined, the tool should be able to measure them and support users in semantic analysis of the results, allowing them to quickly identify quality degradations as well as their causes.

Enterprise Application Integration

Middleware and enterprise application integration (EAI) are not completely orthogonal concepts. They are, however, distinct enough to warrant separate treatment. As we saw in Chapter 2, middleware constitutes the basic infrastructure behind any distributed information system. Initially, middleware was used to construct new systems and to link to mainframe-based systems (2-tier architectures). Later, it was used to distribute the application logic and to integrate the many servers created by 3-tier architectures.