A Biologically-Inspired Preventive Mechanism for Self-Healing of Distributed Software Components

Abstract

Autonomous computing is a term with biological connection. Its ultimate aim is to create computer systems capable of self-management. Given the importance of self healing in self management, a number of researches have tried to prevent the failures of software components by modifying the code of components. Apart from the requirement to know a-priori and access the code of components in order to make them self heal, the approach does not allow the reuse of off-the-shelf components whose codes are not disclosed. Furthermore, none of the current preventive mechanisms for self healing are biologically inspired. This paper introduces a biologically inspired mechanism for self healing of distributed components. Self healing is achieved by central managers in cooperation with a number of connectors, where each manager resides on a single node of a distributed system. Components are seen purely as black boxes, with no need for their modification.