On the theory of system administration

This paper describes a mean field approach to defining and implementing policy-based system administration. The concepts of regulation and optimization are used to define the notion of maintenance. These are then used to evaluate stable equilibria of system configuration, that are associated with sustainable policies for system management. Stable policies are thus associated with fixed points of a mapping that describes the evolution of the system. In general, such fixed points are the solutions of strategic games. A consistent system policy is not sufficient to guarantee compliance; the policy must also be implementable and maintainable. The paper proposes two types of model to understand policy driven management of Human-Computer systems: (i) average dynamical descriptions of computer system variables which provide a quantitative basis for decision, and (ii) competitive game theoretical descriptions that select optimal courses of action by generalizing the notion of configuration equilibria. It is shown how models can be formulated and simple examples are given.