Service Level Management with Agent Technology Torsten Bissel, Manfred Bogen, Christian Bonkowski, Volker Hadamschek, Dieter Strecker GMD - German National.

Service Level Management with Agent Technology

Torsten Bissel, Manfred Bogen, Christian Bonkowski,

Volker Hadamschek, Dieter Strecker

GMD - German National Center for Information Technology http://www.gmd.de

(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)

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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

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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

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5 Step Procedure

2 Assessment

10kb/s

2.0ms

3h/month

50sessions

2003 Quantification

4 Selection

quality factorA: valuequality factorB: value

5 Measurement

1 Identification

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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

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Software Agents

Agentknowledge, policy,goals, competence,ability to build new

agents

working area

client

server

other agent,user

queries

response

AgentManager

response

notification

configuration

queries

let live

let die

15May 22, 2000© Torsten Bissel, GMD

Agent Workflow

Registryagent stockknowledge

PlatformPlatformPlatform

notify

Interface Agentrequest

report

cooperatecommunicate

Agent Managercompetence

agent selectionteam building

report start/stop AM

Task AgentTask Agent

Task Agent

reportconfigure, supervise,start/stop

send task agents

requests

send task agents,assign platforms

Userrequest

feedbackinterfacecreation

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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 Agents @ Platforms– doing active measurement

– communicate results

Registry

An Implementation Example

ZEUS Agent Building ToolkitSLM for WWW

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ZEUS Agent Building Toolkit

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Demonstration: Negotiation Phase

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Demonstration: Working Phase

21May 22, 2000© Torsten Bissel, GMD

Demonstration: Results

Connection Time (average)Download Rate (details)

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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 http://www.gmd.de/

Email: [email protected]

(TERENA Networking Conference 2000)