130 research outputs found
Report from GI-Dagstuhl Seminar 16394: Software Performance Engineering in the DevOps World
This report documents the program and the outcomes of GI-Dagstuhl Seminar
16394 "Software Performance Engineering in the DevOps World".
The seminar addressed the problem of performance-aware DevOps. Both, DevOps
and performance engineering have been growing trends over the past one to two
years, in no small part due to the rise in importance of identifying
performance anomalies in the operations (Ops) of cloud and big data systems and
feeding these back to the development (Dev). However, so far, the research
community has treated software engineering, performance engineering, and cloud
computing mostly as individual research areas. We aimed to identify
cross-community collaboration, and to set the path for long-lasting
collaborations towards performance-aware DevOps.
The main goal of the seminar was to bring together young researchers (PhD
students in a later stage of their PhD, as well as PostDocs or Junior
Professors) in the areas of (i) software engineering, (ii) performance
engineering, and (iii) cloud computing and big data to present their current
research projects, to exchange experience and expertise, to discuss research
challenges, and to develop ideas for future collaborations
A reference architecture for cloud-edge meta-operating systems enabling cross-domain, data-intensive, ML-assisted applications: architectural overview and key concepts
Future data-intensive intelligent applications are required to traverse across the cloudto-edge-to-IoT continuum, where cloud and edge resources elegantly coordinate, alongside sensor networks and data. However, current technical solutions can only partially handle the data outburst associated with the IoT proliferation experienced in recent years, mainly due to their hierarchical architectures. In this context, this paper presents a reference architecture of a meta-operating system (RAMOS), targeted to enable a dynamic, distributed and trusted continuum which will be capable of facilitating the next-generation smart applications at the edge. RAMOS is domain-agnostic, capable of supporting heterogeneous devices in various network environments. Furthermore, the proposed architecture possesses the ability to place the data at the origin in a secure and trusted manner. Based on a layered structure, the building blocks of RAMOS are thoroughly described, and the interconnection and coordination between them is fully presented. Furthermore, illustration of how the proposed reference architecture and its characteristics could fit in potential key industrial and societal applications, which in the future will require more power at the edge, is provided in five practical scenarios, focusing on the distributed intelligence and privacy preservation principles promoted by RAMOS, as well as the concept of environmental footprint minimization. Finally, the business potential of an open edge ecosystem and the societal impacts of climate net neutrality are also illustrated.For UPC authors: this research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities and FEDER, grant number PID2021-124463OB-100.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version
CoScal: Multi-faceted Scaling of Microservices with Reinforcement Learning
The emerging trend towards moving from monolithic applications to microservices has raised new performance challenges in cloud computing environments. Compared with traditional monolithic applications, the microservices are lightweight, fine-grained, and must be executed in a shorter time. Efficient scaling approaches are required to ensure microservices’ system performance under diverse workloads with strict Quality of Service (QoS) requirements and optimize resource provisioning. To solve this problem, we investigate the trade-offs between the dominant scaling techniques, including horizontal scaling, vertical scaling, and brownout in terms of execution cost and response time. We first present a prediction algorithm based on gradient recurrent units to accurately predict workloads assisting in scaling to achieve efficient scaling. Further, we propose a multi-faceted scaling approach using reinforcement learning called CoScal to learn the scaling techniques efficiently. The proposed CoScal approach takes full advantage of data-driven decisions and improves the system performance in terms of high communication cost and delay. We validate our proposed solution by implementing a containerized microservice prototype system and evaluated with two microservice applications. The extensive experiments demonstrate that CoScal reduces response time by 19%-29% and decreases the connection time of services by 16% when compared with the state-of-the-art scaling techniques for Sock Shop application. CoScal can also improve the number of successful transactions with 6%-10% for Stan’s Robot Shop application
Edge Video Analytics: A Survey on Applications, Systems and Enabling Techniques
Video, as a key driver in the global explosion of digital information, can
create tremendous benefits for human society. Governments and enterprises are
deploying innumerable cameras for a variety of applications, e.g., law
enforcement, emergency management, traffic control, and security surveillance,
all facilitated by video analytics (VA). This trend is spurred by the rapid
advancement of deep learning (DL), which enables more precise models for object
classification, detection, and tracking. Meanwhile, with the proliferation of
Internet-connected devices, massive amounts of data are generated daily,
overwhelming the cloud. Edge computing, an emerging paradigm that moves
workloads and services from the network core to the network edge, has been
widely recognized as a promising solution. The resulting new intersection, edge
video analytics (EVA), begins to attract widespread attention. Nevertheless,
only a few loosely-related surveys exist on this topic. The basic concepts of
EVA (e.g., definition, architectures) were not fully elucidated due to the
rapid development of this domain. To fill these gaps, we provide a
comprehensive survey of the recent efforts on EVA. In this paper, we first
review the fundamentals of edge computing, followed by an overview of VA. The
EVA system and its enabling techniques are discussed next. In addition, we
introduce prevalent frameworks and datasets to aid future researchers in the
development of EVA systems. Finally, we discuss existing challenges and foresee
future research directions. We believe this survey will help readers comprehend
the relationship between VA and edge computing, and spark new ideas on EVA.Comment: 31 pages, 13 figure
QoS-Aware Resource Management for Multi-phase Serverless Workflows with Aquatope
Multi-stage serverless applications, i.e., workflows with many computation
and I/O stages, are becoming increasingly representative of FaaS platforms.
Despite their advantages in terms of fine-grained scalability and modular
development, these applications are subject to suboptimal performance, resource
inefficiency, and high costs to a larger degree than previous simple serverless
functions.
We present Aquatope, a QoS-and-uncertainty-aware resource scheduler for
end-to-end serverless workflows that takes into account the inherent
uncertainty present in FaaS platforms, and improves performance predictability
and resource efficiency. Aquatope uses a set of scalable and validated Bayesian
models to create pre-warmed containers ahead of function invocations, and to
allocate appropriate resources at function granularity to meet a complex
workflow's end-to-end QoS, while minimizing resource cost. Across a diverse set
of analytics and interactive multi-stage serverless workloads, Aquatope
significantly outperforms prior systems, reducing QoS violations by 5x, and
cost by 34% on average and up to 52% compared to other QoS-meeting methods
Rethinking Storage Management for Data Processing Pipelines in Cloud Data Centers
Data processing frameworks such as Apache Beam and Apache Spark are used for
a wide range of applications, from logs analysis to data preparation for DNN
training. It is thus unsurprising that there has been a large amount of work on
optimizing these frameworks, including their storage management. The shift to
cloud computing requires optimization across all pipelines concurrently running
across a cluster. In this paper, we look at one specific instance of this
problem: placement of I/O-intensive temporary intermediate data on SSD and HDD.
Efficient data placement is challenging since I/O density is usually unknown at
the time data needs to be placed. Additionally, external factors such as load
variability, job preemption, or job priorities can impact job completion times,
which ultimately affect the I/O density of the temporary files in the workload.
In this paper, we envision that machine learning can be used to solve this
problem. We analyze production logs from Google's data centers for a range of
data processing pipelines. Our analysis shows that I/O density may be
predictable. This suggests that learning-based strategies, if crafted
carefully, could extract predictive features for I/O density of temporary files
involved in various transformations, which could be used to improve the
efficiency of storage management in data processing pipelines
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