Autonomic communications and the reflex unified fault management architecture

As the range of communication services and consumer expectations continue to grow, the demands on telecommunication organizations to find ways to make their systems more adaptable and flexible, while remaining dependable, becomes critical. Autonomic computing and autonomic communications are emerging strategic approaches to addressing these needs. This paper reports on an investigation into adding autonomic behaviour to a large scale telecommunications fault management architecture. In particular, it proposes a ‘reflex-healing’ dual strategy to facilitate this advanced automation. The autonomic reflex reaction is achieved through a pulse monitor, which essentially extends the heartbeat monitor concept developed for fault tolerant systems to include reflex urgency levels and health check summary information.