SmartFrog Meets LCFG: Autonomous Reconfiguration with Central Policy Control

Typical large infrastructures are currently configured from the information in a central configuration repository. As infrastructures get larger and more complex, some degree of autonomous reconfiguration is essential, so that certain configuration changes can be made without the overhead of feeding the changes back via the central repository. However, it must be possible to dictate a central policy for these autonomous changes, and to use different mechanisms for different aspects of the configuration.

This paper describes a framework which can be used to configure different aspects of a system using different methods, including explicit configuration, service location, and various other autonomous techniques. The proven LCFG tool is used for explicit configuration and to provide a wide range of configuration components. The dynamic elements are provided by the SmartFrog framework.