Crossing the Adaptation Boundaries of Distinct Testbeds

Testbeds to experiment with self-adaptive systems allow for the examination of a range of domain-specific problems without the need for specialized or proprietary equipment. They can focus on a need for adaptive control, such as mission completion and security threats, or study mechanisms to allow self-adaptation, such as embedding component awareness and performing the actual deployment of executable code changes during runtime for dynamic adaptation. Individually, needs often narrow the underlying models and functionality of the testbeds so that the experiments can be controlled and understood. There are multiple options to extend the experiments, such as significantly increasing the testbed components, functional requirements, and potential adaptations. However, these options, while necessary to have a fuller understanding of the scalability of the testbed, could maintain an inherent bias based on how the testbed was intended to perform its original operation, limiting its potential for self-improvement. Another option is to introduce some form of integration with a different testbed to determine how each can influence the other's adaptation mechanisms to improve self-awareness techniques. In this paper, we overview our two existing testbeds created for experimenting with self-adaptation concepts. Each testbed employs different runtime model checking and adaptation risk assessment mechanisms, with distinct functional goals. We discuss the difficulties in crossing the adaptation boundaries to perform self-improvement and to increase the potential for valuable communication and awareness.