A multi-agent system for incident management solutions on IT infrastructures

Abstract

The use of multi-agent systems has contributed to the development of the theory and practice of successful solutions in diverse domains. In this paper, we present a solution that has been designed and implemented to support the real-world problem of incident management on IT infrastructures in order to restore a normal service operation as quickly as possible, ensuring that the best possible levels of service quality and availability are maintained. We take outstanding advantage of the following intrinsic characteristics of multi-agent systems in order to develop the proposed solution: (i) modeling the complex and distributed system through an agent architecture, (ii) negotiating as the communication process between different groups of agents in order to solve in an efficient way an incident when it is present, and (iii) automating the performance of the system through the analysis of incidents previously solved. A functionality scenario and example is illustrated as testing of the multi-agent system described. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.