Autonomic Closed Control Loops for Management, an idea whose time has come?

Abstract

Taking an autonomic approach to management and using closed control loops has been the subject of much research in the Network management community since the early 2000s. It is fair to say that Network Management system developers and users have not adopted Autonomic Management approaches very widely. Most network management systems continue to use an ITU TMN inspired layered approach to management.In recent years, a trend towards implementing autonomic management and closed control loops on management systems built using a TMN architecture has emerged in practice. This trend is requirement driven; an autonomic approach is taken when there is no other option for implementing a feature. It is clear to see a closed control loop approach being taken to implement C-SON (Centralized Self Organizing Networks) features in 4G network management systems in the early 2010s. Autonomic approaches are even more apparent in systems such as ONAP that implement SDN and NFV orchestration. However, the implementation of closed control loops is often pragmatic and rigid, focused on the feature being delivered. Providing systemized support for control loops is in its infancy and has much to learn from the extensive autonomic management literatureThis paper surveys the current state of autonomic management in practice and outlines some research challenges that must be addressed to allow it to be systematically supported in current management systems, with a particular focus on ONAP.