Operations Research Methods for Autonomic Resource Management

Varying service demands on next generation networks requires autonomic resource management capabilities to ensure service delivery to customers, motivating the need to develop self-managing algorithms for this purpose. In this paper, we use algorithms from the Operations Research community for this purpose. First, we adapt the Transportation Model to manage distributed resources in the next generation network infrastructure. Coupled with monitoring capabilities, the proposed scheme can automatically adjust the virtual resource allocation to optimize the costs incurred by service providers in offering services to customers. Second, we propose the use of Inventory Control to predict needs for virtual resources and to pre-order required virtual resource amounts. We compare two possible Inventory Control models to manage the virtual resources involved in service delivery. We perform extensive simulations to show the performance improvements made possible by the use of the Transportation Model and Inventory Control for autonomic resource management in next generation networks.