Management Of Distributed Applications Research Articles

The Karabo distributed control system.

The Karabo distributed control system has been developed to address the challenging requirements of the European X-ray Free Electron Laser facility, including complex and custom-made hardware, high data rates and volumes, and close integration of data analysis for distributed processing and rapid feedback. Karabo is a pluggable, distributed application management system forming a supervisory control and data acquisition environment as part of a distributed control system. Karabo provides integrated control of hardware, monitoring, data acquisition and data analysis on distributed hardware, allowing rapid control feedback based on complex algorithms. Services exist for access control, data logging, configuration management and situational awareness through alarm indicators. The flexible framework enables quick response to the changing requirements in control and analysis, and provides an efficient environment for development, and a single interface to make all changes immediately available to operators and experimentalists.

Anomaly detection in the web logs using user-behaviour networks

With the rapid growth of the web attacks, anomaly detection becomes a necessary part in the management of modern large-scale distributed web applications. As the record of the user behaviour, web logs certainly become the research object relate to anomaly detection. Many anomaly detection methods based on automated log analysis have been proposed. However, most researches focus on the content of the single logs, while ignoring the connection between the user and the path. To address this problem, we introduce the graph theory into the anomaly detection and establish a user behaviour network model. Integrating the network structure and the characteristic of anomalous users, we propose five indicators to identify the anomalous users and the anomalous logs. Results show that the method gets a better performance on four real web application log datasets, with a total of about 4 million log messages and 1 million anomalous instances. In addition, this paper integrates and improves a state-of-the-art anomaly detection method, to further analyse the composition of the anomalous logs. We believe that our work will bring a new angle to the research field of the anomaly detection.

Distributed application configuration, management, and visualization with plush

Support for distributed application management in large-scale networked environments remains in its early stages. Although a number of solutions exist for subtasks of application deployment, monitoring, and maintenance in distributed environments, few tools provide a unified framework for application management. Many of the existing tools address the management needs of a single type of application or service that runs in a specific environment, and these tools are not adaptable enough to be used for other applications or platforms. To this end, we present the design and implementation of Plush, a fully configurable application management infrastructure designed to meet the general requirements of several different classes of distributed applications. Plush allows developers to specifically define the flow of control needed by their computations using application building blocks. Through an extensible resource management interface, Plush supports execution in a variety of environments, including both live deployment platforms and emulated clusters. Plush also uses relaxed synchronization primitives for improving fault tolerance and liveness in failure-prone environments. To gain an understanding of how Plush manages different classes of distributed applications, we take a closer look at specific applications and evaluate how Plush provides support for each.

Distributed and dynamic self‐scheduling of parallel MPI Grid applications

AbstractThe execution of distributed applications on the Grid is already a reality. However, as both the number of applications grow and Grids increase in scale, the efficient utilization of the available but shared heterogeneous resources will become increasingly essential to the Grid's successful maturity. Furthermore, it is unclear whether existing Grid management systems are capable of meeting this challenge. The EasyGrid middleware is a hierarchically distributed application management system (AMS) that is embedded into MPI applications to autonomously orchestrate their execution efficiently in computational Grids. The overhead of employing a distinct AMS to make each application system aware brings at least two benefits. First, the adopted policies can be tailored to the specific needs of each application, leading to improved performance. Second, distributing the management effort among executing applications makes Grid management more scalable. This article focuses on scheduling policies of an AMS for a particular class of application, describing a low intrusion implementation of a hybrid scheduling strategy designed to elicit good performance even in dynamic environments such as Grids. Using application‐specific scheduling policies, near‐optimal runtimes highlight the advantages of self‐scheduling when executing one or more system aware applications on a Grid. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Web-based distributed data management in the Childhood Asthma Research and Education (CARE) Network

A well-designed distributed data management application provides an efficient, effective process to collect quality data in multicenter clinical trials. This paper describes the web-based clinical center data management application that was developed by the Data Coordinating Center of the Childhood Asthma Research and Education (CARE) Network. A series of modules was designed to allow the clinical staff at the remote clinical centers to enter clinical trial data, correct entry errors, respond to queries from the Data Coordinating Center, and submit data corrections for previously entered data to ultimately provide a clean and accurate dataset for analysis.

On management technologies and the potential of Web services

From the early days of management research and standardization in the late 1980's, there has always been a quest for a management technology that would be general enough to be used for network, system, service, and distributed application management; efficient in terms of information retrieval time, computational resources required, and management traffic incurred; and easy to use in order to reduce development time and operational costs. From protocol-based approaches such as OSI management and SNMP, attention shifted to distributed object and Web-based approaches. Recently, XML-based approaches and, in particular, Web services have been emerging as a promising Internet-based technology that might also be used for management. In this article we survey first the key aspects of protocol and distributed object approaches to management. We subsequently examine Web services as a distributed object approach to management, and consider its suitability, usability, and performance in comparison to SNMP and CORBA.

Topology based automation of distributed applications management

With the widespread use of distributed computing in the enterprise, there have been significant advances in development paradigms for these applications. Server side component models have considerably simplified development and the complexity has now shifted to the operational side of these applications. The increase in operational complexity has reached a point where it is no longer feasible for humans to manage the applications required to run an enterprise. The initial steps to provide self managing applications are now being taken -- a paradigm known as "autonomic computing" is in it's infancy of evolution. There have been numerous proposed models of how one achieves self management. In this position paper, we formulate the research problems and basis for "lights out" management of enterprise application environments.

Building distributed management applications with the IETF Script MIB

Scalable and efficient management of today's fast growing networks requires distributed management systems. This paper introduces a classification of distributed management systems, followed by an overview of technologies for building such systems. One technology, the IETF Script MIB, is discussed in detail, including an implementation architecture and performance studies. Finally, application scenarios are presented, demonstrating how distributed management applications can be built by means of the IETF Script MIB.

Active networks for efficient distributed network management

The emerging next generation of routers exhibit both high performance and rich functionality, such as support for virtual private networks and QoS. To achieve this, per-flow queuing and fast IP filtering are incorporated into the router hardware. The management of a network comprising such devices and efficient use of the new functionality introduce new challenges. A truly distributed network management system is an attractive candidate to address these challenges. We describe how active network techniques can be used to allow fast and easy deployment of distributed network management applications in IP networks. We describe a prototype system where legacy routers are enhanced with an adjunct active engine, which enables the safe execution and rapid deployment of new distributed management applications in the network layer. This system can gradually be integrated in today's IP network, and allows smooth migration from IP to programmable networks. This is done with an emphasis on efficient use of network resources, which is somewhat obscure by many of today's high-level solutions.

Configuration maintenance for distributed applications management

The MANDAS project has defined a layered architecture for the management of distributed applications. In this paper we examine a vertical slice of this architecture, namely the management applications and services related to configuration management. We introduce an information model which captures the configuration information for distributed applications and discuss a repository service based on the model. We define a set of services and management applications to support maintenance of configuration information and we describe how the different types of configuration information are collected. Finally, we present two management applications that use configuration information.

Distributed Network Management Using SNMP, Java, WWW and CORBA

Java, WWW, and CORBA are complementary technologies that, once joined, may offer a powerful mechanism for the development of distributed management applications without necessarily overlapping some already existing standards such as SNMP and CMIP. Within this context, this paper makes use of these technologies in order to implement a distributed system for the management of a cluster of high performance stations. The information transfer required by this system is basically under the responsibility of the SNMP and the IIOP/CORBA protocols, while the user interaction with the system is done through a Web browser.

A Framework for Designing Distributed ManagementApplications

This paper presents a methodology for the specification and design of multi-domain management systems that control, monitor and administer users and services in a distributed telecommunication environment. It presents a framework, which serves as a blueprint for the design and implementation of distributed management applications. It defines a set of concepts and methods for guiding the analysis, design, and implementation phases of management applications, which are distributed over heterogeneous systems. The framework is based on concepts of Telecommunications Management Networks and Open Distributed Processing, and is partially developed within the Pan-European Reference Configuration for IBC (Integrated Broadband Communication) Services Management (PRISM) project.

Control and coordination of heterogeneous transaction processing systems

Transaction processing systems (TPS) applications are a large component of most business organizations' investment in computer technology. Heterogeneous and distributed computing environments have become essential and beneficial to most corporations. Thus, there is a need for tools to support the development of new distributed TPSs and the migration of existing TPSs to distributed environments. This paper presents the design and construction of a software tool that provides the functionalities necessary for the construction, operation and management of heterogenous distributed TPS applications. The tool design is based on object-orientation and real-time control and is implemented using Prolog and C. We anticipate that the tool will provide practical and significant benefits to the operators and maintainers of large-scale TPSs.

Integrated approach to open distributed management

Due to the liberalization of the telecommunications market, we expect public and private organizations to compete in an open market of basic and value-added services. Broadband networks, high performance multimedia and mobile end systems, distributed information systems, open distributed applications, user and terminal mobility, and multimedia tele-services with different qualities will form the basis for various services to be provided at different costs and with various modalities of use. The provision of such services in a way which meets the users' requirements can be guaranteed only if all the required resources, including the underlying network and the available end systems, are supervised and controlled effectively by an adequate open distributed management system. In addition, the size and scale of future networks, the openness of applications, and the global use of tele-services will require management systems which cross the boundaries of different autonomous management domains. The coordination and cooperation between autonomous operators and managers will be inevitable. This paper describes an integrated approach to open distributed management. It is based on an inter-domain management concept, and comprises an architecture which provides a framework for the development and operation of management services. The architecture includes a development and a run-time environment. The run-time environment consists of an administration platform, an inter-domain management information service and a trader. The development environment comprises a tool-box and construction kits for management services and management user interfaces. Open distributed management applications used for the validation of the architecture and its components are outlined. An overview of future activities concludes the paper.

An object-oriented framework for dynamically configuring extensible distributed systems

Developing extensible, robust and efficient distributed systems is a complex task. To help alleviate this complexity, we have developed the ADAPTIVE Service eXecutive (ASX) framework. ASX is an object-oriented framework composed of automated tools and reusable components. These tools and components help to simplify the development, configuration and reconfiguration of applications in a distributed environment. Using the ASX framework, the services in the applications may be updated and extended without modifying, recompiling, relinking or restarting the applications at run-time. This paper describes the features and object-oriented architecture of the ASX framework. It also describes how the ASX framework has been used to develop a highly modular, reusable and dynamically reconfigurable family of distributed system management applications.

Cooperative computing and integrated system management: A critical comparison of architectural approaches

New information processing service structures based on client-server concepts gain growing importance in both scientific and commercial computing because theyprovide a high flexibility with respect to the positioning of building blocks of a distributed application. The price for this flexibility, however, is a more complex system management. The paper discusses the new management requirements in a cooperative computing environment. The management platforms needed in this context must provide appropriate models for cooperation, services for supporting distributed management applications and an information model as a basis for the modeling of resources relevant to system management. The paper presents and evaluates approaches to solutions existing so far in research and development.

Key challenges in distributed management of broadband transport networks

Significant attention has been focused on establishing a framework of standards and generic guidelines for a layered, distributed approach to network management for broadband transport networks. Initial field deployment trials based on these efforts, using SNCs (subnetwork controllers) or EMs (element managers), have just begun. The paper outlines early distributed management applications that are being considered for deployment in the 1995 time frame. The focus is on the key challenges that must be addressed in realizing initial field deployment of distributed broadband management applications.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Tools for distributed application management

The issues of managing distributed applications are discussed, and a set of tools, the meta system, that solves some longstanding problems is presented. The Meta model of a distributed application is described. To make the discussion concrete, it is shown how NuMon, a seismological analysis system for monitoring compliance with nuclear test-ban treaties is managed within the Meta framework. The three steps entailed in using Meta are described. First the programmer instruments the application and its environment with sensors and actuators. The programmer then describes the application structure using the object-oriented data modeling facilities of the authors' high-level control language, Lomita. Finally, the programmer writes a control program referencing the data model. Meta's performance and real-time behavior are examined.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>

Making real-time reactive systems reliable

A reactive system is characterized by a control program that interacts with an environment (or controlled program). The control program monitors the environment and reacts to significant events by sending commands to the environment. This structure is quite general. Not only are most embedded real time systems reactive systems, but so are monitoring and debugging systems and distributed application management systems. Since reactive systems are usually long running and may control physical equipment, fault tolerance is vital. The research tries to understand the principal issues of fault tolerance in real time reactive systems and to build tools that allow a programmer to design reliable, real time reactive systems. In order to make real time reactive systems reliable, several issues must be addressed: (1) How can a control program be built to tolerate failures of sensors and actuators. To achieve this, a methodology was developed for transforming a control program that references physical value into one that tolerates sensors that can fail and can return inaccurate values; (2) How can the real time reactive system be built to tolerate failures of the control program. Towards this goal, whether the techniques presented can be extended to real time reactive systems is investigated; and (3) How can the environment be specified in a way that is useful for writing a control program. Towards this goal, whether a system with real time constraints can be expressed as an equivalent system without such constraints is also investigated.