Entities -- Organization Model

Entities are the main participants in mobile agent based management systems. In order to find all relations a model of the management system is necessary that helps to understand possible roles of entities with their relations. Therefore, we start with any management architecture (e.g. central, hierarchical or multicenter control management [#!han99!#]) and introduce agent systems with mobile agents in existing relations of traditional management entities. The results reveal that there are several different kinds of entity pairs and relations.

  

Figure: Possible Organization Model

Figure is a simplified but general example of all entities and relations. It shows entities as subjects (on higher levels) acting on objects (on lower levels). Although it resembles a hierarchical management architecture it is not limited to such architectures. Managers in this figure are not only management stations but also management tools etc. used by management stations, acting on managed resources. A managed resource is any device, system or application to be managed.

Some relations between entities are local to a host system. Adjacent entities represent this case in the figure. Free arrows represent remote communication between entities. Agent systems in the figure may be local to a manager or managed resource but may as well be separated on a different host. This is necessary as we do not expect all managers (e.g. tools) and managed resources to provide full agent systems (i.e. including all security mechanisms). This allows integrating legacy systems while still being able to move mobile agents `closer', e.g., to a managed resource.

Following roles of entities can be identified: