Model-based system configuration approach for Internetware

Internetware, a new software paradigm, enables systems to be built and evolved for better service quality according to changes in the environment. However, at the same time Internetware greatly complicates system management tasks due to the autonomy, cooperation and evolution of its components. In fact, the configuration of large-scale Internet-based software in the real scenarios is likely to involve a large number of components and hundreds of associated configuration options with variables, whose values may be dynamically determined depending on the execution environment, or to cope with needs of customers. In this paper, we firstly analyze the configuration issues of Internetware, and then present a model-based engineering approach to managing the configuration for Internetware systematically. Based on the Architecture Based Composition model, an internetware configuration process model is proposed that abstracts the configuration in the lifecycle of Internetware. Focusing on the fundamental activities in configuration process, the methods and mechanisms of analyzing and performing the configuration in terms of its constraints, dependencies, heterogeneity and dynamics, with supporting tools to realize the configuration automation, are presented. The proposed methods and mechanisms have been implemented, validated and rolled out in IBM software products and Cloud center. © 2013 Science China Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.