Microservice Capabilities for System Management
System management services broadly represent the ability to control and inspect systems, subsystems, and resources. Examples of system resources include, but are not limited to:
computational resources (e.g., cloud computing, edge computing, or HPC)
data and information systems (e.g., file systems, databases, and data catalogs)
industrial control systems (e.g., programmable logic controllers and robotics)
scientific instruments (e.g., electron microscopes and neutron detectors)
As shown in Fig. 122, an INTERSECT System consists of one or more INTERSECT Services and a collection of associated Resources. Each service provides utility in the form of a set of microservice capabilities. All INTERSECT activities involving system resources are facilitated through service interactions. A given resource may be exclusive to a system or shared amongst systems. An Exclusive Resource is one that is only accessed by the parent system’s services. A Shared Resource may be accessed by services from other systems.
A system may also include Subsystems, which are self-contained systems that are used by the parent system. Subsystems typically exist to maintain operational independence over a group of services that provide access and control of one or more system resources.
Fig. 122 INTERSECT System, Subsystem, Service, and Resource Hierarchy
Each INTERSECT System is associated with a single organization and optionally a facility (or some other form of sub-organization such as a department or division) within that organization. The full ER model for components of an INTERSECT ecosystem is shown in Fig. 123.
Fig. 123 INTERSECT System Entity-Relationship Model
To enable dynamic behaviors in interconnected science ecosystems, each INTERSECT system is expected manage its associated services, resources, and subsystems for its entire useful lifetime. It is therefore assumed that every INTERSECT system will have an associated System Management service that coordinates all aspects related to system information management, control of services and subsystems, and status monitoring of associated resources, services, and subsystems.
When a system is newly introduced to an ecosystem, it must register itself with the ecosystem to provide contact details for its System Management service so that other members of the ecosystem may obtain information on the system’s underlying services, resources, and subsystems. Additional details on the expected microservice interactions related to system, service, and resource registration can be found in Registration of INTERSECT Systems, Services, and Resources.
Registration of INTERSECT Systems, Services, and Resources
Dynamic registration of INTERSECT systems, resources, and services are crucial activities in the deployment of interconnected scientific ecosystems. Below we provide example orchestration sequences for each of these three registration activities.
Registration of an INTERSECT system is shown in Fig. 124. It is assumed that every INTERSECT system will have an associated management service that coordinates all aspects related to system information management, control of services and subsystems, and status monitoring of associated resources, services, and subsystems. In the figure, this service is called the “System-X Management” service. It provides two key microservice capabilities, the System Information Catalog (see Capability - System Management :: System Information Catalog) and the System Manager (see Capability - System Management :: System Manager). The management service is responsible for registering its parent system with the registrar. The INTERSECT architecture permits a hierarchy of coordinating services providing the Systems Registrar capability (see Capability - System Management :: Systems Registrar). In this figure, we assume each distinct INTERSECT operational domain (e.g., an organization or facility) provides a registrar. The registrar provides a domain-scoped UUID to the system through use of the namespace UUID generation method of the UUID Generation capability (see Capability - Utility :: UUID Generation).
Fig. 124 Microservice interaction sequence for registering an INTERSECT system.
Registration of resources associated with an INTERSECT system is shown in Fig. 125. The management service is again responsible for registering the resources with the domain registrar to obtain system-scoped UUIDs for each resource. It also needs to update the system information catalog to associated each resource with the parent system and its assigned resource UUID.
Fig. 125 Microservice interaction sequence for registering INTERSECT system resources.
Registration of services associated with an INTERSECT system is shown in Fig. 126. The newly deployed instrument adapater service in this figure makes a request to register with the management service, which in turn registers the service with the domain registrar to obtain a system-scoped UUID for the service. The interaction with the the UUID Generation capability is elided, but follows the same pattern as that used for assigning system-scoped resource UUIDs in Fig. 125. The managment service then updates the system information catalog to record the capabilities and resources associated with the new service and its assigned service UUID.
Fig. 126 Microservice interaction sequence for registering an INTERSECT system service.