Strider: a black-box, state-based approach to change and configuration management and support

AbstractWe describe a new approach, called Strider, to Change and Configuration Management and Support (CCMS). Strider is a black-box approach: without relying on specifications, it uses state differencing to identify potential causes of differing program behaviors, uses state tracing to identify actual, run-time state dependencies, and uses statistical behavior modeling for noise filtering. Strider is a state-based approach: instead of linking vague, high level descriptions and symptoms to relevant actions, it models management and support problems in terms of individual, named pieces of low level configuration state and provides precise mappings to user-friendly information through a computer genomics database. We use troubleshooting of configuration failures to demonstrate that the Strider approach reduces problem complexity by several orders of magnitude, making root-cause analysis possible

Automated system administration with feedback regulation. Software practice and experience

The automation of system administration tasks requires a notion of convergence towards a stable state. Some simple models for such convergence with feedback, utilizing the system administration robot cfengine, are examined. Statistical analysis of computer systems can provide information which may be used to regulate the way in which they are used in the future without the need for excessive human intervention. @ 1998 John Wiley & Sous, Ltd. KEY WORDS: feedback regulation automatic system administratio