Service Level Management with Agent Technology Torsten Bissel, Manfred Bogen, Christian Bonkowski, Volker Hadamschek, Dieter Strecker GMD - German National Center for Information Technology (TERENA Networking Conference 2000)

2May 22, 2000© Torsten Bissel, GMD Content Introduction: Service Level Management (SLM) & Service Level Agreements (SLAs) A New Method for Quality of Service Measurement Agent Technology Service Level Management with Agents An Implementation Example Conclusion

Introduction Service Level Management (SLM) Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

4May 22, 2000© Torsten Bissel, GMD Service Level Management - Key Benefits Quality of Service measurement Definition of required performance –Service Level Agreements (SLAs) Alignment of information technology with business Setting / management of expectation

5May 22, 2000© Torsten Bissel, GMD Service Level Management

6May 22, 2000© Torsten Bissel, GMD Service Level Agreements (SLAs) SLAs include the topics: network availability / network throughput system availability / system performance application response time help desk availabilty mean time to repair customer satisfaction etc.

A New Method for Quality of Service Measurement “5 Step Procedure” Quality of a World Wide Web Service

8May 22, 2000© Torsten Bissel, GMD Quality Dependencies

9May 22, 2000© Torsten Bissel, GMD 5 Step Procedure 2Assessment 10kb/s 2.0ms 3h/month 50sessions 200 3Quantification 4Selection quality factorA: value quality factorB: value 5Measurement 1Identification

10May 22, 2000© Torsten Bissel, GMD Defining WWW Quality Passive Measurement Active Measurement of Connection Time –information about system availabilty, system performance, and network performace –treshold: 2 sec Download Rate –information about network performance / throughput –treshold: 5 kbit/sec

Agent Technology Definition „Intelligent Agents“ Agent Society

12May 22, 2000© Torsten Bissel, GMD Defining Intelligent Agents Software Agents are slim and flexible modules work autonomously are co-operative are mobile should learn their behavior to optimize their workflow

13May 22, 2000© Torsten Bissel, GMD Software Agents Agent knowledge, policy, goals, competence, ability to build new agents working area client server other agent, user queries response Agent Manager response notification configuration queries let live let die

Service Level Management with Agents Prototype for World Wide Web

15May 22, 2000© Torsten Bissel, GMD Agent Workflow Registry agent stock knowledge Platform notify Interface Agent request report cooperate communicate Agent Manager competence agent selection team building report start/stop AM Task Agent report configure, supervise, start/stop send task agents requests send task agents, assign platforms User request feedback interface creation

16May 22, 2000© Torsten Bissel, GMD Agents in a WWW environment Interface Agent –Start / Stop of measurement –input: service, frequency, time –visualize results Agent Manager –allocation and coordination of resources –processing results Task Platforms –doing active measurement –communicate results Registry

An Implementation Example ZEUS Agent Building Toolkit SLM for WWW

18May 22, 2000© Torsten Bissel, GMD ZEUS Agent Building Toolkit

19May 22, 2000© Torsten Bissel, GMD Demonstration: Negotiation Phase

20May 22, 2000© Torsten Bissel, GMD Demonstration: Working Phase

21May 22, 2000© Torsten Bissel, GMD Demonstration: Results Connection Time (average) Download Rate (details)

22May 22, 2000© Torsten Bissel, GMD Conclusion doing SLM should be an easy task –agents implement the „complex“ tasks –end user makes a choice Intelligent Agents offer several advantages in doing SLM prototype implementation as „Proof of Concept“ learning and mobility of intelligent agents are subjects for further studies certification infrastructure needed

Service Level Management with Agent Technology Torsten Bissel, Manfred Bogen, Christian Bonkowski, Volker Hadamschek, Dieter Strecker GMD - German National Center for Information Technology (TERENA Networking Conference 2000)