An analysis of impact of workload fluctuations on performance of computer systems

Author

Li, Guang-Liang

Author_Institution

Inst. of Comput. Technol., Acad. Sinica, Beijing, China

fYear

1995

fDate

24-26 Apr 1995

Firstpage

256

Lastpage

264

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of system performance degradation induced by workload fluctuations. The basic idea of the analysis is based on catastrophe theory. Conventional performance models typically express workload only by using its average properties. However we may not be able to predict system performance simply by using average workload properties, since computer systems are nonlinear systems and workload of computer systems usually fluctuates. The interaction between workload fluctuations and the nonlinearity may greatly affect system behavior. Our analysis shows that fluctuations in workload may change the dynamic structure of the system state space and cause the system performance to vary drastically

Keywords

catastrophe theory; performance evaluation; catastrophe theory; computer systems performance; dynamic structure; performance models; system performance degradation; system state space; workload fluctuations; Computer crashes; Degradation; Fluctuations; Nonlinear dynamical systems; Nonlinear systems; Performance analysis; Queueing analysis; Stability analysis; State-space methods; System performance;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Computer Performance and Dependability Symposium, 1995. Proceedings., International

Conference_Location

Erlangen

Print_ISBN

0-8186-7059-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IPDS.1995.395826

Filename

395826