How Autonomic Fault-Management Can Address Current Challenges in Fault-Management Faced in IT and Telecommunication Networks

Abstract. In this paper we discuss the perspectives that should be taken into account by the research community while trying to evolve Fault-Management towards Autonomic Fault-Management. The well known and established FCAPS Management Framework for Fault-management, Configuration-management, Accounting-management, Performance-management and Security-management, assumes the involvement of human technicians in the management of systems and networks as is the practice today. Due to the growing complexity of networks, services and the management of both, it is now widely believed within the academia and the industry that the concept of Self-Managing Networks will address some of the current challenges in the management of networks and services. Emerging Self-Management technologies are promising to reduce OPEX for the network operator. There is still a lot of work to be done before we can see advanced, production level self-manageability aspects of systems and networks, beyond what has been achieved through scripting based automation techniques that have been successfully applied to management and network operation processes. The concept of autonomicity—realized through control-loop structures and feed-back mechanisms and processes, as well as the information/knowledge flow used to drive the control-loops), becomes an enabler for advanced self-manageability of networks and services, beyond what has been achieved through scripting based automation techniques. A control-loop can be introduced to bind the processes involved in each of the FCAPS areas, and the “autonomic manager components” that drive the control loops and are specific for different FCAPS should interwork with each other in order to close the gaps characterized by dependencies among FCAPS functional areas as the FCAPS functional areas go autonomic and realize self-management. The dependencies among FCAPS functional areas need to be studied such that the functions/operations and processes that belong to the different areas can be well interconnected to achieve global system goals, such as integrity, resilience and high degree guarantee of system and service availability.