The Asymptotic Configuration of Application Components in a Distributed System

Abstract

Many distributed applications depend on explicit ordering to affect their lifecycle operations (start up, shutdown, re-configuration, etc.). Normally this procedure is carried out in a serialized manner. Consequently for applications containing large numbers of components, state and configuration changes are something to be avoided. They are costly, error prone and time consuming. This paper details an approach to application configuration which is specifically designed to address the issues of scale and reliability inherent in large distributed applications. The proposed architecture leads to applications which are ‘self healing’ in nature, and whose configuration mechanism is only loosely coupled to the number of components in a deployed system. Additionally, in applications where configuration changes can be planned in advance, the proposed mechanism can be used to make effective use of network resources in bandwidth limited environments