Enabling alarm correlation for a mobile agent based system and network management - a wrapper concept

Solutions for system and network management given today are afflicted with two main shortcomings, namely the centralised approach they are based on and the inadequate addressing of heterogeneous environments. While the latter is the main concern of, for example, Web-based management activities, the aspect of centralisation is not being covered to full extend. With regard to the explosive growth of computer systems and networks both in size and complexity, new approaches therefore have to be evaluated which address all problems caused by complexity and heterogeneity. Mobile agent technology is being discussed as a promising new technology for various application areas, with management being one of the most promising. In this paper, problems arising when trying to apply this new technology to system and network management are identified and discussed. The focus is on how to handle the overall complexity with mobile agents, which are limited in size, knowledge, and functionality. An architecture is presented which introduces various types of mobile agents. By determining the required correlation sequence and identifying the co-operation of agents, it is shown how an alarm correlation with mobile agents can be established, which forms the basis for addressing management tasks with mobile agent technology.