ANDREA: Management for the Survival of Very Large Distributed Systems

Large scale distributed systems—including human and software organizations—benefit from top-down command and control in order to survive threats and damage. Yet achieving top-down management organization over millions of components is a significant challenge. This raises the question: is top down control a valid approach to the survival management of very large systems? We attempt to answer this question through the production of the ANDREA management architecture. ANDREA applies a novel architecture based on loosely coupled management relationships. In this work, we discuss the design and implementation of ANDREA. We then evaluate its feasible operation and summarize its cost with scale. We also overview an application of the infrastructure. As a result of our studies, we assert that top-down control remains a viable and important aspect of management for very large and dynamic systems.