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Autognostics is a new paradigm that describes the capacity for computer networks to be self-aware. It is considered one of the major components of Autonomic Networking.
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(May 2007) |
Autognostics is a new paradigm that describes the capacity for computer networks to be self-aware. It is considered one of the major components of Autonomic Networking.
One of the most important characteristics of today's Internet that has contributed to its success is its basic design principle: a simple and transparent core with intelligence at the edges (the so-called "end-to-end principle"). Based on this principle, the network carries data without knowing the characteristics of that data (e.g., voice, video, etc.) - only the end-points have application-specific knowledge. If something goes wrong with the data, only the edge may be able to recognize that since it knows about the application and what the expected behavior is. The core has no information about what should happen with that data - it only forwards packets.
Although an effective and beneficial attribute, this design principle has also led to many of today's problems, limitations, and frustrations. Currently, it is almost impossible for most end-users to know why certain network-based applications do not work well and what they need to do to make it better. Also, network operators who interact with the core in low-level terms such as router configuration have problems expressing their high-level goals into low-level actions. In high-level terms, this may be summarized as a weak coupling between the network and application layers of the overall system.
As a consequence of the Internet end-to-end principle, the network performance experienced by a particular application is difficult to attribute based on the behavior of the individual elements. At any given moment, the measure of performance between any two points is typically unknown and applications must operate blindly. As a further consequence, changes to the configuration of given element, or changes in the end-to-end path, cannot easily be validated. Optimization and provisioning cannot then be automated except against only the simplest design specifications.
There is an increasing interest in Autonomic Networking research, and a strong conviction that an evolution from the current networking status quo is necessary. Although to date there have not been any practical implementations demonstrating the benefits of an effective autonomic networking paradigm, there seems to be a consensus as to the characteristics which such implementations would need to demonstrate. These specifically include continuous monitoring, identifying, diagnosing and fixing problems based on high-level policies and objectives.
Autognostics, as a major part of the autonomic networking concept, intends to bring networks to a new level of awareness and eliminate the lack of visibility which currently exists in today's networks.
Autognostics is a new paradigm that describes the capacity for computer networks to be self-aware, in part and as a whole, and dynamically adapt to the applications running on them by autonomously monitoring, identifying, diagnosing, resolving issues, subsequently verifying that any remediation was successful, and reporting the impact with respect to the application's use (i.e., providing visibility into the changes to networks and their effects).
Although similar to the concept of network awareness, i.e., the capability of network devices and applications to be aware of network characteristics (see References section below), it is noteworthy that autognostics takes that concept one step further. The main difference is the auto part of autognostics, which entails that network devices are self-aware of network characteristics, and have the capability to adapt themselves as a result of continuous monitoring and diagnostics.
Autognostics, or in other words deep self-knowledge, can be best described as the ability of a network to know itself and the applications that run on it. This knowledge is used to autonomously adapt to dynamic network and application conditions such as utilization, capacity, quality of service/application/user experience, etc.
In order to achieve autognosis, networks need a means to:
In software quality assurance, performance testing is in general a testing practice performed to determine how a system performs in terms of responsiveness and stability under a particular workload. It can also serve to investigate, measure, validate or verify other quality attributes of the system, such as scalability, reliability and resource usage.
Organization development (OD) is the study and implementation of practices, systems, and techniques that affect organizational change. The goal of which is to modify a group's/organization's performance and/or culture. The organizational changes are typically initiated by the group's stakeholders. OD emerged from human relations studies in the 1930s, during which psychologists realized that organizational structures and processes influence worker behavior and motivation.
Self-organization, also called spontaneous order in the social sciences, is a process where some form of overall order arises from local interactions between parts of an initially disordered system. The process can be spontaneous when sufficient energy is available, not needing control by any external agent. It is often triggered by seemingly random fluctuations, amplified by positive feedback. The resulting organization is wholly decentralized, distributed over all the components of the system. As such, the organization is typically robust and able to survive or self-repair substantial perturbation. Chaos theory discusses self-organization in terms of islands of predictability in a sea of chaotic unpredictability.
Awareness is a concept about knowing, perceiving and being cognizant of events, in philosophy and psychology. Another definition describes it as a state wherein a subject is aware of some information when that information is directly available to bring to bear in the direction of a wide range of behavioral actions. The concept is often synonymous to consciousness and is also understood as being consciousness itself.
Autonomic computing (AC) is distributed computing resources with self-managing characteristics, adapting to unpredictable changes while hiding intrinsic complexity to operators and users. Initiated by IBM in 2001, this initiative ultimately aimed to develop computer systems capable of self-management, to overcome the rapidly growing complexity of computing systems management, and to reduce the barrier that complexity poses to further growth.
Metacognition is an awareness of one's thought processes and an understanding of the patterns behind them. The term comes from the root word meta, meaning "beyond", or "on top of". Metacognition can take many forms, such as reflecting on one's ways of thinking and knowing when and how to use particular strategies for problem-solving. There are generally two components of metacognition: (1) knowledge about cognition and (2) regulation of cognition. A metacognitive model differs from other scientific models in that the creator of the model is per definition also enclosed within it. Scientific models are often prone to distancing the observer from the object or field of study whereas a metacognitive model in general tries to include the observer in the model.
Situational awareness or situation awareness (SA) is the understanding of an environment, its elements, and how it changes with respect to time or other factors. Situational awareness is important for effective decision making in many environments. It is formally defined as:
“the perception of the elements in the environment within a volume of time and space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status in the near future”.
Capacity management's goal is to ensure that information technology resources are sufficient to meet upcoming business requirements cost-effectively. One common interpretation of capacity management is described in the ITIL framework. ITIL version 3 views capacity management as comprising three sub-processes: business capacity management, service capacity management, and component capacity management.
Competence is the set of demonstrable characteristics and skills that enable and improve the efficiency or performance of a job. Competency is a series of knowledge, abilities, skills, experiences and behaviors, which leads to effective performance in an individual's activities. Competency is measurable and can be developed through training.
In the fields of information technology and systems management, application performance management (APM) is the monitoring and management of the performance and availability of software applications. APM strives to detect and diagnose complex application performance problems to maintain an expected level of service. APM is "the translation of IT metrics into business meaning ."
Meta learning is a subfield of machine learning where automatic learning algorithms are applied to metadata about machine learning experiments. As of 2017, the term had not found a standard interpretation, however the main goal is to use such metadata to understand how automatic learning can become flexible in solving learning problems, hence to improve the performance of existing learning algorithms or to learn (induce) the learning algorithm itself, hence the alternative term learning to learn.
Autonomic Networking follows the concept of Autonomic Computing, an initiative started by IBM in 2001. Its ultimate aim is to create self-managing networks to overcome the rapidly growing complexity of the Internet and other networks and to enable their further growth, far beyond the size of today.
Performance engineering encompasses the techniques applied during a systems development life cycle to ensure the non-functional requirements for performance will be met. It may be alternatively referred to as systems performance engineering within systems engineering, and software performance engineering or application performance engineering within software engineering.
Business transaction management (BTM), also known as business transaction monitoring, application transaction profiling or user defined transaction profiling, is the practice of managing information technology (IT) from a business transaction perspective. It provides a tool for tracking the flow of transactions across IT infrastructure, in addition to detection, alerting, and correction of unexpected changes in business or technical conditions. BTM provides visibility into the flow of transactions across infrastructure tiers, including a dynamic mapping of the application topology.
Application service management (ASM) is an emerging discipline within systems management that focuses on monitoring and managing the performance and quality of service of business transactions.
In communication networks, cognitive network (CN) is a new type of data network that makes use of cutting edge technology from several research areas to solve some problems current networks are faced with. Cognitive network is different from cognitive radio (CR) as it covers all the layers of the OSI model.
In distributed system and system resource, elasticity is defined as "the degree to which a system is able to adapt to workload changes by provisioning and de-provisioning resources in an autonomic manner, such that at each point in time the available resources match the current demand as closely as possible". Elasticity is a defining characteristic that differentiates cloud computing from previously proposed computing paradigms, such as grid computing. The dynamic adaptation of capacity, e.g., by altering the use of computing resources, to meet a varying workload is called "elastic computing".
Viable system theory (VST) concerns cybernetic processes in relation to the development/evolution of dynamical systems: it can be used to explain living systems, which are considered to be complex and adaptive, can learn, and are capable of maintaining an autonomous existence, at least within the confines of their constraints. These attributes involve the maintenance of internal stability through adaptation to changing environments. One can distinguish between two strands such theory: formal systems and principally non-formal system. Formal viable system theory is normally referred to as viability theory, and provides a mathematical approach to explore the dynamics of complex systems set within the context of control theory. In contrast, principally non-formal viable system theory is concerned with descriptive approaches to the study of viability through the processes of control and communication, though these theories may have mathematical descriptions associated with them.
Underwater domain awareness (UDA) is the aspect of maritime domain awareness focused on the underwater sector, including, from a security perspective, sea lines of communication (SLOC), coastal waters and varied maritime assets with reference to hostile intent and the proliferation of submarine and mine capabilities intended to limit access to the seas and littoral waters. The military requirement is not the only motivation for undersea domain awareness. The earth's undersea geophysical activities as they relate to the well-being of humans is also relevant, as monitoring such activities can provide vital clues to minimize the impact of devastating natural disasters.
In IT operations, software performance management is the subset of tools and processes in IT Operations which deals with the collection, monitoring, and analysis of performance metrics. These metrics can indicate to IT staff whether a system component is up and running (available), or that the component is behaving in an abnormal way that would impact its ability to function correctly—much like how a doctor may measure pulse, respiration, and temperature to measure how the human body is "operating". This type of monitoring originated with computer network components, but has now expanded into monitoring other components such as servers and storage devices, as well as groups of components organized to deliver specific services and Business Service Management).