Title
What to expect when you are consolidating: effective prediction models of application performance on multicores
Abstract
Consolidation of multiple applications with diverse and changing resource requirements is common in multicore systems as hardware resources are abundant. As opportunities for better system usage become ample, so are opportunities to degrade individual application performances due to unregulated performance interference between applications and system resources. Can we predict a performance region within which application performance is expected to lie under different consolidations? Alternatively, can we maximize resource utilization while maintaining individual application performance targets? In this work we provide a methodology that offers answers to the above difficult questions by constructing a queueing-theory based tool that can be used to accurately predict application scalability on multicores. The tool can also provide the optimal consolidation suggestions to maximize system resource utilization while meeting application performance targets. The proposed methodology is based on asymptotic analysis that can quickly provide a range of performance values that the user should expect under various consolidation scenarios. In addition, when more accurate performance forecasting is needed, the methodology can provide more accurate predictions using approximate mean value analysis. The methodology is light-weight as it relies on capturing application resource demands using standard system monitoring, via non-intrusive low-level measurements.We evaluate our approach on an IBM Power7 system using the DaCapo and SPECjvm2008 benchmark suites. From 900 different consolidations of application instances, our tool accurately predicts the average iteration time of collocated applications with an average error below 9 per cent. Experimental and analytical results are in excellent agreement, confirming the robustness of the proposed methodology in suggesting the best consolidations that meet given performance objectives of individual applications while maximizing system resource utilization.
Year
DOI
Venue
2014
10.1007/s10586-013-0273-8
Cluster Computing
Keywords
Field
DocType
Performance,Consolidation,Multicores,Prediction models,Asymptotic analysis
IBM,Resource (disambiguation),Computer science,Robustness (computer science),Real-time computing,System monitoring,Interference (wave propagation),Predictive modelling,Consolidation (soil),Scalability,Distributed computing
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
17
1
1386-7857
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
2
0.36
24
Authors
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Lydia Y. Chen161.14
Giuseppe Serazzi2909123.23
Danilo Ansaloni329623.78
Evgenia Smirni41857161.97
Walter Binder5107792.58