Abstract
This paper introduces the Patia Autonomic webserver, which has been designed to be self-monitoring and adaptive to not only improve webserver performance but robustness in terms of helping with flash crowd situations. This paper describes the Patia architecture, highlighting how a traditional computing system can be redesigned to become reflective and adaptive. In doing so we examine and report initial performance results concerning the extra functionality required of autonomic software, highlighting the advantages and problems of adding autonomicity.