We present a new way to analyze and understand the effects of configuration management. We define a clear division between the operations of a program that are controlled by configuration and the operations of a program that are affected by the data the program is processing. This allows us to make more accurate inferences about how changing a configuration *knob* will affect the overall security and performance of the system. We build on existing static analysis tools and control flow representations originally designed for compiler optimization to build a clear picture of the effects of configuration changes. We refine the concept of understanding program execution paths with a control plane and data plane by focusing on the effects of configuration changes as a part of the control plane.
We provide a method for communicating the importance of each configuration knob to a system administrator using a standardized ranking and scoring system. We also apply these methods to configuration knobs with known performance and security effects in two commonly used pieces of software.
Finally, we discuss several future avenues of scientific research and practical work which will carry these ideas further to improve the state of configuration management.
Yehuda Katz is a PhD student advised by Ashok Agrawala. He started working on computers when he was in elementary school, and participated in the first year of the Computer Science Department's "Passport" program for high school students. He became interested in research through the many interactions with the faculty of the Computer Science Department through his undergraduate courses. He has also worked on the CS department's IT staff as well as enterprise IT systems outside the university, giving him a unique insight into both the worlds of system administration and Computer Science research. His research focuses on how to improve system design so that system administrators fully understand the systems they manage, and he now works on cybersecurity and system administration improvements for the federal government.