Objectives

GeneSyS is an Information Society Project (IST-2001-34162) started in March 2002.

The GeneSyS project is done by a consortium including EADS-LV (France), NAVUS (Germany), D3Group (Germany), High Performance Computing Centre Stuttgart (Germany) and MTA SZTAKI (Hungary)

The aim of the GeneSyS project is to specify and develop a new supervision middleware for distributed systems and applications, as the need for a global and generic supervision solution has arisen among various industries. In fact, today solutions are mainly focusing on the supervision of low levels of a distributed system, i.e. hardware and network availability and monitoring. But these systems are becoming more and more complex and therefore, they need to be supervised in a new way:

• The supervision shall implement the control and monitoring not only of low level but also of higher levels (i.e. application, QoS, GroupWare,…) of the distributed system.
• The global supervision shall range from a passive monitoring of the resources to an active control of the applications running over these distributed systems.
• The supervision shall be applicable to a various set of different distributed systems and applications, i.e. it must be generic and open.

The top-level objectives of the GeneSyS project are:

1. To specify and develop an open, generic, modular and comprehensive supervision concept,
2. To integrate and validate this supervision structure within various industrial contexts,
3. To achieve the adoption of the GeneSyS concepts by all stakeholders (internal and external to the consortium), and to ensure that the vision of the proposed generic structure will become a new emerging standard.

Overview

The GeneSyS project prototype is composed of

• a dedicated middleware to address the communication problem between heterogeneous platforms. It will be made of a Communication Server Core and Connectors.
• Several types of Agents to be plugged into the middleware. Some Agents interface with a Monitored Entity and transfer the information and functionality of a Monitored Entity via the use of GeneSyS Connectors into the GeneSyS middleware. Other Agents build the interface to Applications such as a Supervision Console with a graphical user interface or via other clients intended for users.
• Several "special" agents : one identified as the Directory Server is used by data producing agent to publish their capabilities. Consuming agent use the Directory Server to discover and locate other agents that publish the information they are interested in. Another one is the Repository. The Repository component is expected to store all forms and types of information that is produced and handled within the GeneSyS middleware.

Examples of GeneSyS

One of the validation scenario of Genesys project aims at the   monitoring of remote web servers and web based on-line services. MTA  SZTAKI project partner maintains dozens of web servers within the  governmental sphere day by day. This maintenance requires  continuous  attention to the operating system resources used, as well as the  maintenance of server configurations and content developments.  Operators need to check the QoS parameters of these services regularly (hit and visit counts, response times, etc.). Many occasions these  services are implemented using multi-tier architectures thus a simple  monitoring of a single entity is not possible. Genesys concept and  architecture will be introduced in this context for the monitoring  purposes.

Some of the partners of the Consortium are also involved in the development of GRID applications. For GRID applications to run reliably a robust system monitoring and management backing is necessary. GeneSyS provides a consistent, extendible and standards based middleware architecture that will be capable of supporting the needs of the GRID community.