Minimizing response time in an autonomic computing system using proportional control

Abstract

Ecommerce is an area where an Autonomic Computing system could be very effectively deployed. Ecommerce has created demand for high quality information technology services and businesses are seeking quality of service guarantees from their service providers. These guarantees are expressed as part of service level agreements. Properly adjusting tuning parameters for enforcement of the service level agreement is time-consuming and skills-intensive. Moreover, in case of changes to the workload, the setting of the parameters may no longer be optimum. In an ecommerce system, where the workload changes frequently, there is a need to update the parameters at regular intervals. This paper describes an approach to automate the tuning of MaxClients parameter of Apache web server using a proportional controller based on the required response time and the current workload. This is an illustration of the self-optimizing characteristic of an autonomic computing system. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.