What is auto-healing?
Auto-healing (also referred to as self-healing) is a system’s ability to detect and resolve issues with no human intervention. Intelligent algorithms self-monitor, self-diagnose, and self-repair in real-time. Autonomous capabilities can initiate corrective actions with “zero touch” from outside support.
Self-healing has one primary goal: to minimize disruptions. The system achieves that goal by increasing reliability. A system able to repair itself can achieve optimal performance with less downtime.
As a result, you gain two benefits. First, operational efficiency increases. Your system can improve itself with less manual labor. Second, customer satisfaction grows. A system with minimal disruptions protects the user’s experience. You limit events that introduce friction, such as security risks, downtimes, or malfunctions.
Auto-healing techniques
There are numerous auto-healing techniques you can use. The scope and type you execute depends on your specific system. But most self-healing actions fit within the following five categories:
-
Monitor: First, your IoT system engages in fault detection. Assessments of all sensor data, network traffic, and hardware detects abnormal behavior.
-
Analyze: Second, you diagnose any found deviations. Correct judgment is needed to limit false positives and switch to backups.
-
Execute: Third, your IoT system will act. Whether that involves using over-the-air updates or load balancing, corrective activity will occur automatically.
-
Optimize: Fourth, self-tuning will occur after an event. Algorithms can improve to prevent similar errors from happening in the future.
-
Predict: Fifth, your system will use the newly collected data to anticipate failures or performance degradation. Preventative actions can take place to maximize operations.
How does auto-healing improve your IoT software systems?
Auto-healing offers three direct improvements for your connected devices: reliability, efficiency, and security.
Reliability
Auto-healing ensures that you maintain performance even during unexpected events. That provides a far more consistent user experience.
For example, you can better handle load fluctuations, even as you scale resources. Or, achieve a high level of availability, as your system automatically mitigates failures. Or use load balancing and dynamic resource allocation to maintain adequate response times.
Greater resilience allows for optimal performance in unpredictable environments.
Efficiency
Auto-healing also results in operational efficiency. Optimized resources and fewer downtimes directly reduce total expense. And automatic maintenance requires far less manual effort. Streamline the workload with less upfront cost.
Security
While not a complete defense solution, auto-healing techniques can help minimize the impact of some malicious behavior. For example, Adaptive measures and service availability mitigate the impact of Denial of Service (DoS) or Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.
Examples of the auto-healing superpower in action
There are numerous examples of how you can apply the auto-healing superpower to your connected equipment:
-
Predictive maintenance: Sensor data (e.g. temperature, vibrations, supply voltage, etc) and machine learning algorithms predict potential equipment failures. With self-healing, your systems can preemptively plan upkeep schedules according to equipment health.
-
Production line optimization: IoT devices can use production data (inventory levels, productivity, output) to detect bottlenecks. Automatic redistribution will balance workloads or depict novel ways to improve your current processes.
-
Automated quality control: Real-time monitoring creates feedback loops that continuously improve product quality. If quality drops below testing expectations, parameters are automatically adjusted (raw material inputs, time stamps, machine settings).
-
Redundancy and failover: If a machine or component fails, self-healing systems transfer workloads to a backup.
-
Energy management: Real-time energy data allows your production to improve demand response. During peak energy demand, non-critical equipment pause while critical operations automatically scale with automatic setting adjustments.
-
Cybersecurity: Auto-healing can help industrial control systems detect and respond to unauthorized access attempts, security vulnerabilities, or malware infections. Afterward, security configuration or component isolation can occur during further investigation.
How to capture the benefits of auto-healing
If you want to leverage the auto-healing superpower in your own business, consider the following strategies:
Cloud-based strategies
-
Automate infrastructure provisioning: Coordinate automatic and flexible resource orchestration between virtual machines, containers, databases, etc. This creates the consistent environment you need to integrate self-healing mechanisms.
-
Embrace Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Develop a modular infrastructure with the principles of IaC. This approach facilitates resource management and optimizes system recovery.
-
Deploy stateless compute nodes: Employ stateless web application services, where each node can process any request independently. This significantly enhances the system’s scalability.
-
Utilize modular deployment units: Use deployment units such as Docker containers. These units help envelope software into standard, interchangeable parts. Modular parts promote seamless deployment and simplify your software management.
Case Study: Auto-Healing in the Amazon Web Service (AWS) Cloud
AWS offers several examples of how you can use self-healing in the cloud. Consider a Docker-based service implemented with AWS Fargate, Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR), and Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS). In this setup, you define the parameters of your service node and the criteria to validate the health of a running node. AWS Fargate, ECR, and ECS then facilitate built-in mechanisms for auto-restarting, load balancing, and auto-scaling services according to those rules. It is a simple way to maintain optimal service performance and availability. Or consider Amazon’s Relational Database Service (RDS). Capable of multi-availability zone failover implementations, RDS provides a robust recovery solution. In the event of a major outage, RDS can redirect requests to a standby database. You achieve continuity of service with minimal interruptions and zero human intervention. Lastly, Amazon transparently handles auto-healing in serverless Services. AWS Lambda or AWS App Runner, can automatically manage and heal potential issues in your code deployment execution. This approach lends itself to simpler, more efficient auto-healing management.
Strategies on Edge
-
Set up monitoring systems: Integrate monitoring systems that can log health and performance metrics of all edge devices. Such solutions can engage in real-time tracking to better detect issues.
-
Integrate automation tools: Select tools that can automate responses, such as system reboots, restart services, clear cache/memory, and software reinstallation.
-
Install backup and recovery systems: Install redundant systems that switch to a backup when failures occur, such as standby devices or secondary edge processing units.
-
Leverage data analytics and machine learning: Implement data-driven algorithms that identify patterns, indicate potential problems, and trigger preventive measures before issues affect operations.
-
Utilize Over-The-Air (OTA) updates: Allow remote updating and patching of all your IoT devices. Configure all systems to trigger OTA updates (firmware or edge computing services) to fix software bugs or rectify vulnerabilities.
-
Manage network connectivity: Secure your network connectivity to synchronize all edge devices with your central system. Stable and reliable connectivity is ideal, but even intermittent connectivity can support auto-healing mechanisms.
-
Invest in standardization: Use standardized protocols and interfaces to facilitate smooth deployment across a diverse array of devices and platforms.
Case Study: Auto-Healing Edge Gateways On AWS
Amazon once again offers a compelling look at auto-healing on Edge. For example, consider AWS Device Shadows. The service adds a shadow to all IoT devices, used as a proxy to your real device. The shadow maintains an accessible state for your device, regardless of whether the device is online or not. For instance, AWS Device shadows could gracefully degrade access to an automated guided vehicle (AGV) in a warehouse with uneven network connectivity. Once the AGV is back online, device shadows implement state changes that may have occurred offline. Or consider AWS IoT Greengrass, a modular runtime environment for edge computing. It can run Docker containers on edge. Using container technologies similar to the cloud allows auto-healing strategies like redundancy, failover, or load balancing. Greengrass also offers facilities to deploy over-the-air (OTA) updates over MQTT to a fleet of devices in the field—an automatic method to fix firmware issues.
Conclusion
Failures are bound to happen. But the superpower of auto-healing can help you seamlessly detect and rectify issues with minimal supervision. Adaptive systems and improve upon themselves for greater resiliency and efficiency. Such improvements optimize your operations.
More importantly, you can combine all software superpowers to achieve the most valuable goal: improving the customer experience.
-
Mutation: Cultivate user benefits with tiny changes that improve the product
-
Scalability: Prepare for the future so that your user a seamless and consistent experience
-
Polymorphism: Deliver personalized interactions for users, regardless of the context
-
Omniscience: Create a system that can improve upon itself, that way users enjoy high-quality performance
-
Auto-Healing: Build a resilient and secure system that ensures smooth and frictionless experience.
Combined, you create adaptive and innovative IoT systems. No matter the environment, you continue to deliver exceptional performance to your customers. Those who leverage the software powers will achieve such a feat with less labor or cost, giving a complete market advantage.
That’s a wrap on our software superpower series. If you want to learn more about these concepts and how you can use software superpowers to elevate your business, reach out to us.
