PACMAN

Abstract

The lack of automation associated with network operations in general and network configuration management in particular, is widely recognized as a significant contributing factor to user-impacting network events. In this paper we present our work on the PACMAN system, a Platform for Automated and Controlled network operations and configuration MANagement. PACMAN realizes network operations by executing active documents, which systematically capture the dynamics in network management tasks. Active documents not only enable the complete execution of low-level configuration management tasks, but also allow the construction of more sophisticated tasks, while imposing additional reasoning logic to realize network-wide management objectives. We present the design, realization and evaluation of the PACMAN framework and illustrate its utility by presenting the implementation of several sophisticated operational tasks.