Model-based self-adaptive resource allocation in virtualized environments

The adoption of virtualization and Cloud Computing technologies promises a number of benefits such as increased flexibility, better energy efficiency and lower operating costs for IT systems. However, highly variable workloads make it challenging to provide quality-of-service guarantees while at the same time ensuring efficient resource utilization. To avoid violations of service-level agreements (SLAs) or inefficient resource usage, resource allocations have to be adapted continuously during operation to reflect changes in application workloads. In this paper, we present a novel approach to self-adaptive resource allocation in virtualized environments based on online architecture-level performance models. We present a detailed case study of a representative enterprise application, the new SPECjEnterprise2010 benchmark, deployed in a virtualized cluster environment. The case study serves as a proof-of-concept demonstrating the effectiveness and practical applicability of our approach.