Autonomous operation of networking devices

An information processing system for managing a configuration of a network device, the information processing system comprising:

• a memory;
• a processor communicatively coupled to the memory;
• and
• an autonomic manager communicatively coupled to the memory and the processor, wherein the autonomic manager is adapted to:
• determine a current state associated with at least one network device;
• retrieve a set of commands available for the current state of the network device;
• determine, for each command in the set of commands, a next state associated with a current command;
• create, in response to determining a next state associated with a current command, a transition from the current state to the next state;
• determine that a transition has been created for each command in the set of commands;
• create an extended finite state machine comprising at least the current state, the next state, and the transition for each of the commands in the set of commands;
• determine, from the extended finite state machine, at least one set of transitions required to reach a target state from the current state of the network device;
• select one of the at least one set of transitions based on one or more metrics;
• and
• direct the network element to execute commands corresponding to the selected set of transitions.