Software and Machine Configuration Management. Akamai‘s system for distributing software and system configuration information throughout its network is designed to handle the heterogeneous and distributed nature of the platform. A key requirement is that machines must converge to have the correct software and system configuration, even in the face of rollbacks and missing update steps that may have resulted from connectivity problems. As part of each machines software and system configuration update, the desired state of the machine is constructed and then compared against the running state. The system then takes any actions necessary to make the running state match the desired state, such as updating software components. Due to the design-for-reliability principle, software updates can be made with no visible external impact—for example, a machine requiring an update will be suspended so that new requests will be directed to other servers, and the machine will then restart its services after in-progress requests have completed.
