Hybrid agents coordination in a virtualized environment

Abstract

Virtualization is a fast growing technology that provides innovative consolidation of computer systems by enabling hardware abstraction that maximizes utilization and management of system resources. This technology development however, does not properly address the agent-based systems and their unique requirements for coordination. Currently, agent-based systems are deployed in closed or open networked systems with their coordination managed by middle ware services on a Local Area Network or Internet. In this research project, a coordination layer (agent middleware) is introduced in the virtualized environment to enable the resource location and communication by agents in different virtual hosts. This research explores agent-based models for coordination and their impact in virtualized environment by developing a test virtual environment with agents deployed in different virtual hosts. The main contribution of this work is the demonstration that an agent-based coordination model can be realized using open source virtualization Hypervisors like SUN xVM VirtualBox, Java technology and open source APIs such as jPOS, MX4J, XDoclet, and JMx. The model can support agent coordination in a virtualized environment by facilitating the resource-agent location, intelligent agent learning of the environment and coordination laws derived from ISO 8583 protocol. The work also revealed that the impact of the agent-based model for coordination in a virtualized environment is a highavailability and performance minded infrastructure for computing resources provisioning as a service. The above contribution was demonstrated through a prototype Electronic Payment Gateway that deployed a master agent in the host operating system and worker agents in the virtual hosts. The master agent served the purpose of the coordination layer that received requests from external agents and mapped them intelligently to the appropriate worker agents.