Automatic configuration of internet services

Abstract

Recent research has found that operators frequently misconfigure Internet services, causing various availability and performance problems. In this paper, we propose a software infrastructure that eliminates several types of misconfiguration by automating the generation of configuration files in Internet services, even as the services evolve. The infrastructure comprises a custom scripting language, configuration file templates, communicating runtime monitors, and heuristic algorithms to detect dependencies between configuration parameters and select ideal configurations. To demonstrate our infrastructure experimentally, we apply it to a realistic online auction service. Our results show that the infrastructure can simplify operation significantly while eliminating 58% of the misconfigurations found in a previous study of the same service. Furthermore, our results show that the infrastructure can efficiently determine the configuration parameters that lead to high performance as the service evolves through a hardware upgrade and the scheduled maintenance of a few nodes.