In one embodiment, functional system elements are added to an autonomic manager to enable automatic online sample interval selection. In another embodiment, a method for determining the sample interval by continually characterizing the system workload behavior includes monitoring the system data and analyzing the degree to which the workload is stationary. This makes the online optimization method less sensitive to system noise and capable of being adapted to handle different workloads. The effectiveness of the autonomic optimizer is thereby improved, making it easier to manage a wide range of systems.