Configuration Management for Multi-Agent Systems

Abstract

As heterogeneous distributed systems, multi-agent systems present some challenging configuration management issues. There are the problems of knowing how to allocate agents to computers, launch them on remote hosts, and once the agents have been launched, how to monitor their runtime status so as to manage computing resources effectively. In this paper, we present the RETSINA Configuration Manager, "RECoMa". We describe its architecture, how it uses agent infrastructure such as service discovery, to assist the multi-agent system administrator in allocating, launching, and monitoring a heterogeneous distributed agent system in a distributed and networked computing environment.