IBM has launched an autonomic computing toolkit to help
developers build self-healing computer systems.
The toolkit, which is based on the Eclipse open-source
framework, will work with the IBM Software Development Platform,
and is designed to help developers add autonomic elements to their
applications.
The toolkit contains embeddable components, tools, usage
scenarios and documentation
The components cover four core areas. The autonomic management
engine monitors the application, identifies any problems and
decides what should be done to correct them, while the integrated
solutions console allows a company's IT administration to be
monitored and run centrally, over a web-based infrastructure.
The solution installation and deployment technologies are core
to autonomic computing, spotting interdependencies between
applications to reduce installation and configuration problems.
The fourth component group, problem determination technologies,
includes a common base event format to standardise the exchange of
data on problems, a generic log adaptor that converts existing
files to the common base event format, and a log and trace analyzer
that reads the logs in the common base event format, correlates the
results and displays the records. This speeds up analysis of the
root cause of problems.
IDC analyst Chris Ingle said that autonomic computing is an
important part of IBM's On Demand computing strategy. However,
while developers are likely to download and try the toolkit, it's
very early days for the technology.
"People are very interested in it, but it's not being built into
systems just yet," he added.
Management technology has generally been added to applications
as an afterthought, and it will certainly make code easier to
manage if it is built in during development, he said. "But it's all
at a fairly early stage, it's very advanced technology."
There is, as yet, no standard for self-healing technology, as
the area is still developing, and this means that companies such
as IBM and Microsoft are developing in very different directions,
Ingle said.
Microsoft aims to develop self-healing, autonomic computing
under its Visual Studio product line. "There needs to be some
unification, as everyone's releasing different things. There are
groups trying to establish standards, but it's what gets deployed
first that becomes the standard," said Ingle.
The toolkit, which supports IBM Aix, Linux on Intel systems and
Windows 2000 platforms, also includes online tutorials and user
guides to help developers.
The toolkit is available at
http://www.ibm.com/autonomic,
with further information on
http://www.ibm.com/developerWorks/autonomic.
Upgraded versions will be released throughout the year.
Gillian Law writes for IDG News
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