In this paper we present an autonomic web services architecture that manages both the performance of service containers and the interconnection of those containers into a service overlay network.??The advantages of this approach include the easing of management tasks through the autonomic systems ability to self-configure, self-optimise and self-heal. We also benefit from improved resilience and anticipate an improvement in overall performance.???In our architecture we incorporate a structured distributed hash table peer-to-peer overlay network within our autonomic web services container. Our architecture is inherently non-hierarchical, widely distributed and enables SLA compliant deployment of WSRF services. We have simplified the management of such a system by adhering to autonomic principles, and??we maintain the performance of the system by tightly integrating SLA compliance and migrating services between containers to preserve QoS. We have developed a workable system for both service deployment and migration without the need for global state.