ANSAI Community Self-Healing Priorities¶

Overview¶

This document outlines potential self-healing services for ANSAI v2.0+, prioritized by community value and common pain points.

Prioritization Criteria¶

Pain Frequency: How often does this problem occur?
Impact Severity: How bad is it when it happens?
Manual Effort: How much time does manual fixing take?
Detectability: Can we reliably detect the issue?
Fixability: Can we safely automate the fix?
Community Value: How many users would benefit?

High Priority (v2.0)¶

1. Disk Space Management ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐¶

Pain Point: Disk fills up, services crash, systems become unresponsive

Self-Healing Actions: - Monitor disk usage with configurable thresholds (e.g., 80%, 90%, 95%) - Automatic cleanup: - Rotate and compress old logs - Clear package manager caches (apt clean, yum clean) - Remove old journal entries - Clean container images and volumes - Clear temporary files older than X days - Send alert before auto-cleanup - Detailed report of what was cleaned and space recovered

Why High Priority: - Extremely common issue - Often causes cascading failures - Easy to detect and fix safely - Huge time saver

Example Implementation:

disk_monitoring:
  thresholds:
    warning: 80
    critical: 90
    emergency: 95
  auto_cleanup:
    logs_older_than: 30 days
    temp_files_older_than: 7 days
    package_cache: true
    docker_images: unused
    journal_size: 100M

2. Memory Leak Detection & Mitigation ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐¶

Pain Point: Services gradually consume more memory until OOM killer strikes

Self-Healing Actions: - Track memory usage trends per service - Detect abnormal growth patterns - Gradual escalation: 1. Alert on trend 2. Attempt garbage collection (if applicable) 3. Restart service before OOM - Memory limit enforcement via cgroups/systemd - Detailed memory usage reports

Why High Priority: - Common in long-running services - Often happens at worst times (high load) - Prevents catastrophic OOM failures - Difficult to debug manually

3. Certificate Expiration Monitoring ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐¶

Pain Point: SSL/TLS certificates expire, breaking HTTPS services

Self-Healing Actions: - Monitor certificate expiration dates - Alerts at 30, 14, 7, 3, 1 days before expiration - Automatic renewal: - Let's Encrypt via certbot - ACME protocol support - Custom certificate workflows - Service reload after renewal - Validation of new certificates

Why High Priority: - High impact when it happens - Completely preventable - Well-defined automation path - Critical for production services

4. Database Health & Maintenance ⭐⭐⭐⭐¶

Pain Point: Database locks, connection leaks, bloat, corruption

Self-Healing Actions:

PostgreSQL: - VACUUM automation - Connection leak detection and cleanup - Lock detection and resolution - Index maintenance - Query performance monitoring

MySQL/MariaDB: - Table optimization - Connection pool management - Slow query detection - Replication lag monitoring

SQLite: - Lock detection and cleanup - VACUUM and integrity checks - Journal mode optimization - Corruption detection

MongoDB: - Connection management - Index optimization - Replication health

Why High Priority: - Databases are critical - Issues often require expertise - Can prevent data loss - Significant downtime reducer

5. Failed Backup Detection ⭐⭐⭐⭐¶

Pain Point: Backups silently fail, discovered only during restore

Self-Healing Actions: - Monitor backup job success/failure - Verify backup integrity - Test restore operations - Alert on consecutive failures - Automatic retry with different strategy - Space verification before backup - Rotation of old backups

Why High Priority: - Critical for disaster recovery - Often neglected until too late - Can automate testing - Peace of mind value

Medium Priority (v2.0 or v2.5)¶

6. Network Connectivity Issues ⭐⭐⭐⭐¶

Pain Point: DNS failures, firewall issues, routing problems

Self-Healing Actions: - DNS resolution monitoring - Automatic DNS cache flush - Fallback DNS servers - Route verification - Firewall rule validation - Connection pool cleanup - Network interface restart (last resort)

Why Medium Priority: - Less frequent than disk/memory issues - Can have external causes - More complex to diagnose - Risky to auto-fix some scenarios

7. Log Aggregation & Management ⭐⭐⭐¶

Pain Point: Logs scattered, hard to find issues, consume disk space

Self-Healing Actions: - Centralized log collection - Intelligent rotation - Compression of old logs - Pattern detection for known issues - Automatic ticket creation for anomalies - Log level adjustment based on errors

Why Medium Priority: - Important but not critical - Many existing solutions - Value in integration - Useful for diagnostics

8. Container Health (Docker/Podman) ⭐⭐⭐⭐¶

Pain Point: Containers stuck, unused images, network issues

Self-Healing Actions: - Container health checks - Automatic restart of unhealthy containers - Image cleanup (unused, old) - Volume cleanup - Network troubleshooting - Resource limit enforcement - Registry connectivity

Why Medium Priority: - Growing use case - Docker has some built-in healing - Complex orchestration exists (K8s) - Good for simple deployments

9. Security Updates ⭐⭐⭐⭐¶

Pain Point: Security patches not applied, vulnerabilities linger

Self-Healing Actions: - Monitor for security updates - Automatic installation during maintenance windows - Service restart coordination - Rollback on failure - Compliance reporting - CVE tracking

Why Medium Priority: - Critical for security - Can be disruptive - Needs careful testing - Many orgs have policies - Good for edge/IoT devices

10. Web Server Issues ⭐⭐⭐¶

Pain Point: Apache/Nginx issues, configuration problems

Self-Healing Actions: - Configuration validation - Graceful reload on config changes - Worker process management - Connection limit enforcement - SSL/TLS configuration validation - Performance optimization

Why Medium Priority: - Common but stable - Good config management helps - Complements service healing - Useful integration point

Lower Priority (v3.0+)¶

11. Performance Degradation Detection ⭐⭐⭐¶

Pain Point: Services slow down over time, hard to pinpoint cause

Self-Healing Actions: - Response time monitoring - Automatic cache clearing - Connection pool tuning - Query optimization suggestions - Resource allocation adjustment - Preemptive restarts

Why Lower Priority: - Hard to detect reliably - Often requires custom tuning - May need ML/AI - Application-specific

12. API Rate Limiting & Circuit Breaking ⭐⭐⭐¶

Pain Point: External API failures cascade, rate limits hit

Self-Healing Actions: - Automatic circuit breaker - Request queuing - Exponential backoff - Fallback mechanisms - Rate limit monitoring - API health checks

Why Lower Priority: - Application-level concern - Many framework solutions - Good for specific use cases

13. Message Queue Health ⭐⭐⭐¶

Pain Point: RabbitMQ, Kafka, Redis queue backlogs

Self-Healing Actions: - Queue depth monitoring - Consumer scaling - Dead letter queue management - Memory/disk usage - Connection management - Replication health

Why Lower Priority: - Specialized use case - Platform-specific - Complex orchestration - Good for event-driven architectures

14. Git Repository Maintenance ⭐⭐¶

Pain Point: Repos grow large, slow operations

Self-Healing Actions: - Git garbage collection - Prune old branches - LFS cleanup - Clone optimization - Hook validation

Why Lower Priority: - Niche use case - Low impact - Can do manually - Good for GitOps platforms

15. Cron Job Monitoring ⭐⭐⭐¶

Pain Point: Cron jobs fail silently

Self-Healing Actions: - Job execution monitoring - Failure detection - Automatic retry - Healthchecks.io integration - Lock file cleanup - Schedule validation

Why Lower Priority: - Can use external tools - Application-specific - Healthchecks.io already covers this - Good complement to existing features

Community Input Needed¶

Questions for Users¶

Which problems do you face most often?
Rank the above by frequency in your environment
Which problems cost you the most time?
Consider both detection and remediation
Which problems cause the most downtime?
Business impact assessment
What would you pay for?
If this were a commercial product
What's missing from this list?
Industry-specific needs
Platform-specific issues

How to Provide Feedback¶

GitHub Issues: Open an issue with [feature-request] tag
Discussions: Comment on priorities in GitHub Discussions
Pull Requests: Contribute implementations
Community Calls: Join monthly planning sessions (coming soon)

Implementation Strategy¶

Phase 1: Core Four (v2.0)¶

Disk space management
Memory leak detection
Certificate monitoring
Database health

Rationale: High frequency, high impact, clear automation path

Phase 2: Infrastructure (v2.5)¶

Network connectivity
Container health
Security updates
Web server issues

Rationale: Broader infrastructure coverage, common pain points

Phase 3: Advanced (v3.0)¶

Performance monitoring
Message queue health
API management
Specialized tooling

Rationale: More complex, ML-driven, application-specific

Design Principles¶

All self-healing services should follow:

Safe by Default
Conservative thresholds
Dry-run mode
Rollback capability
Transparent
Detailed logging
Email reports
Audit trail
Configurable
Adjustable thresholds
Enable/disable per service
Custom actions
Testable
Comprehensive test suite
Failure simulation
Validation tools
Documented
Clear guides
Troubleshooting steps
Example configurations

Success Metrics¶

How we'll measure each feature:

Adoption Rate: % of users enabling the feature
Incident Reduction: Decrease in manual interventions
Time Saved: Hours saved per month
False Positive Rate: Unnecessary alerts/actions
Community Satisfaction: User feedback scores

Contributing Your Use Case¶

Have a specific self-healing need? Share it!

Template¶

**Problem**: [Describe the issue]
**Frequency**: [How often it occurs]
**Impact**: [What happens when it occurs]
**Current Solution**: [How you fix it manually]
**Ideal Self-Healing**: [What automation would look like]
**Value**: [Why this matters to you/community]

Help us prioritize! Comment on GitHub Discussions

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