Management of heterogeneous workloads

Abstract

Systems and methods for managing a system of heterogeneous workloads are provided. Work that enters the system is separated into a plurality of heterogeneous workloads. A plurality of high-level quality of service goals is gathered. At least one of the plurality of high-level quality of service goals corresponds to each of the plurality of heterogeneous workloads. A plurality of control functions are determined that are provided by virtualizations on one or more containers in which one or more of the plurality of heterogeneous workloads run. An expected utility of a plurality of settings of at least one of the plurality of control functions is determined in response to the plurality of high-level quality of service goals. At least one of the plurality of control functions is exercised in response to the expected utility to effect changes in the behavior of the system.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION[0001]This application is a divisional of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11 / 741,875 filed on Apr. 30, 2007, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]The present invention relates generally to application management, and more particularly, to methods and apparatus for management of heterogeneous workloadsBACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]Many organizations rely on a heterogeneous set of applications to deliver critical services to their customers and partners. This set of applications includes web workloads typically hosted on a collection of clustered application servers and a back-end tier database. The application mix also includes non-interactive workloads such as portfolio analysis, document indexing, and various types of scientific computations. To efficiently utilize the computing power of their datacenters, organizations allow these heterogeneous workloads to execute on the s...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0012]A system is provided that considerably improves the way heterogeneous workloads are managed on a set of heterogeneous server machines using automation mechanisms provided by server virtualization technologies. The system introduces several novel features. First, it allows heterogeneous workloads to be collocated on any server machine, thus reducing the granularity of resource allocation. This is an important aspect for many organizations that rely on a small set of powerful machines to deliver their services, as it allows for a more effective resource allocation when any workload requires a fractional machine allocation to meet its goals. Second, the approach uses high-level performance goals, as opposed to lower-level resource requirements, to drive resource allocation. Hence, unlike previous techniques, which manage virtual machines according to their defined resource requirements, an embodiment of the present invention provides an application-centric view of the system in which a virtual machine is only a tool used to achieve performance objectives. Third, an embodiment of the present invention exploits a range of new automation mechanisms that will also benefit a system with a homogeneous, particularly non-interactive, workload by allowing more effective scheduling of jobs.

Problems solved by technology

Typically, resource allocation is performed with a granularity of a full server machine, as it is difficult to configure and enforce policies that allow server machines to be shared among workloads.

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