Visitors to CeBIT who are in the mood to wreak a little
network havoc might want to stop by IBM's autonomic computing
display, where they will be welcome to press a button to cause a
workload surge felt by IBM servers in Raleigh, North Carolina. If
all goes as IBM plans, the surge will be detected and responded to
by the company's new autonomic computing software
suite.
The software will be demonstrated at the show in Hanover on 12
-19 March. Eventually it will be added to WebSphere Application
Server Version 5 and DB2 8.1, said IBM officials. The company isn't
yet announcing a specific timeframe for the technologies to be
offered in those software versions, both of which are currently
available.
Adaptive forecasting software predicts sudden increases in
workload, triggering rapid reconfiguration and online capacity
technology that adds server capacity to handle the volume and then
later decreases capacity as the demand subsides. Rapid
reconfiguration uses new capabilities in WebSphere Application
Server Version 5.0 to add nodes when more resources are needed and
then quickly remove the nodes when demand diminishes.
"People often talk about being able to dynamically add
capability, but this technology recognises that the surges come and
the surges go," said Alan Ganek, IBM vice president of autonomic
computing.
The forecasting software would predict spikes in workload at
websites, Ganek said, mentioning news sites as one market that
could benefit as those have "huge spikes up and down depending on
news of the day". An indication of a workload surge would be
enough for the technology to automatically add server capacity so
that capacity is not exceeded, he said.
One problem with such technology to date is that there has been
a time delay between when a workload surge is detected and when
capacity is added and by then it's often too late to ably handle
the spike in traffic, said Joe Hellerstein, manager of the adaptive
systems department at IBM Research.
At the CeBIT demonstration, visitors will be able to press the
surge button at the display and the technology in Raleigh will
contend with a different network response each time the button is
pushed. The surges will be unexpected and so the technology
demonstration is aimed at showing the quick response to the
workload increase and then the change back to lower capacity after
the surge passes.
Although when the technology will be released is not yet fixed,
Ganek said that IBM is "working aggressively" to get it to
market.
Autonomic computing is technology that manages and improves
network operations without a lot of human intervention and is meant
to make systems less complex and easier to maintain. Besides IBM,
Sun Microsystems and various other IT vendors are working on
similar technologies and projects.