Coordinating service performance and application placement management

Abstract

Apparatus, systems and methods for service and / or business for coordinating tasks of performance management and application placement management in a dynamic fashion. An example process is dynamic in the face of fluctuations in the request load to the distributed computer system and the periodic adjustments to the placement of applications onto servers in said distributed computer system. There are two opposite functional flows in said process: a demand estimation function and a capacity adjustment function. The coordination system involves two subsystems: a demand estimator and a capacity adjuster, along with appropriate interfaces to of the performance manager and the application placement manager. This results in application placement process reacting quicker to demand fluctuations, performance guarantees are better met by rearranging the resources to be allocated to the various classes of service, and the management system works in an unsupervised mode, thus reducing manual administration costs and human errors.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0001] The invention relates to on-demand provisioning of services in a computer system so as to best meet the quality of service level provided in the face of fluctuations in the service request load. More particularly, the invention relates to the coordination of the tasks of a performance manager and an application placement manager, to better estimate capacity needs of the various services and the adjustment of the placement of applications providing the services onto servers in the computer system. BACKGROUND [0002] A computer system, which consists of one or more servers, where requests belong to a multitude of quality-of-service classes, each with a guaranteed performance quality of service, and the request load fluctuates with time is considered. In such a system, a performance manager works dynamically towards achieving the performance guarantees for the various quality-of-classes of requests by optimally allocating resources and properly directing sc...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0008] This invention introduces a process for coordinating the tasks of the performance manager and the application placement manager in a dynamic fashion. Further, this invention introduces a system that implements the coordination process. The process is dynamic in the face of fluctuations in the request load to the distributed computer system and the periodic adjustments to the placement of applications onto servers in the distributed computer system. There are two opposite functional flows in the process: a demand estimation function and a capacity adjustment function. The coordination system involves two subsystems: a demand estimator and a capacity adjuster, along with appropriate interfaces to of the performance manager and the application placement manager. There are several advantages to dynamic coordination between the performance manager and the application placement manager. First, the application placement process reacts quicker to demand fluctuations. Second, the performance guarantees are better met by rearranging the resources to be allocated to the various classes of service. Third, the management system works in an unsupervised mode, thus reducing manual administration costs and human errors.

Problems solved by technology

If the performance manager and the application placement manager are not working in synchrony, then either each manager will attempt to achieve its local goals without addressing the global objectives, or both managers may work against each other in a way that improving the performance of one manager may place severe restrictions on the other manager.

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