Homogeneity as an advantage: it takes a community to protect an application

We examine how to turn the scale of a large homogeneous software deployment from an operational and security disadvantage into an advantageous application community that can detect, diagnose, and recover from its own operational faults and malicious attacks. We propose a system called VERNIER that provides a virtualized execution environment in conjunction with collaborative diagnosis and response functions using a knowledge-sharing infrastructure. We report on the preliminary implementation of the system, its experimental evaluation, and lessons learned during development.