Models

The basic valuables of system administration are the system resources: file space, CPU share, memory share and network share. The theory of system administration can be viewed as a competition for these resources and for user privileges. The central obstacle in formulating a scenario in terms of game theory is the classification of strategies and their evaluation in terms of a characteristic (payoff) matrix.

• As a zero sum, two person game system administration is a game between the collective users and the system administrator. The aim of the users is to consume all of the system resources, while the aim of the administrator is to keep the system as close as possible to its ideal state. Ideally, the system administrators strategies should always bring the system closer to the ideal state. This is the property of convergence referred to in ref. [6,3]. The ideal outcome of this game is a stalemate, or equilibrium somewhere close to the ideal state.

  This game is often one with perfect information since all the important moves are visible to both players, however both sides can engage in bluffing. Clearly the administrator can win, either by limiting or reducing the consumption of resources and by extending the resources of the system. A user can `win' in a certain pessimistic sense by moving the ideal state so far from the ideal that the system crashes and thus the game ends.

• A more optimistic variant of the above, is to view the aim of users as being to produce as much useful work as possible. This is a more complicated aim, since users can now impede their own progress by consuming too many resources, thus impairing the system as a whole and preventing themselves from being able to work (users need to be environmentally friendly). Experience from reality shows that most users do not concern themselves with this aspect however; they see it as the system administrators job to deal with such problems when they arise.

• As a zero sum, N-person game one can make a more detailed model, in which users compete against one another in addition to the system administrator. The system administrator's task then becomes to act as a kind of Robin Hood character, preventing any one user's consumption of all resources, trying to distribute resources fairly. Again, the aim of the administrator is to maximize the duration of the game by keeping the system as close to the ideal state as possible.