Evaluating the scalability of distributed systems
- 1 June 2000
- journal article
- Published by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems
- Vol. 11 (6), 589-603
- https://doi.org/10.1109/71.862209
Abstract
Many distributed systems must be scalable, meaning that they must be economically deployable in a wide range of sizes and configurations. This paper presents a scalability metric based on cost-effectiveness, where the effectiveness is a function of the system's throughput and its quality of service. It is part of a framework which also includes a scaling strategy for introducing changes as a function of a scale factor, and an automated virtual design optimization at each scale factor. This is an adaptation of concepts for scalability measures in parallel computing. Scalability is measured by the range of scale factors that give a satisfactory value of the metric, and good scalability is a joint property of the initial design and the scaling strategy. The results give insight into the scaling capacity of the designs, and into how to improve the design. A rapid simple bound on the metric is also described.The metric is demonstrated in this work by applying it to some well-known idealized systems, and to real prototypes of communications software.Keywords
This publication has 16 references indexed in Scilit:
- Evaluating the scalability of distributed systemsPublished by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) ,2002
- The Method of LayersIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 1995
- The stochastic rendezvous network model for performance of synchronous client-server-like distributed softwareIEEE Transactions on Computers, 1995
- The location-based paradigm for replication: Achieving efficiency and availability in distributed systemsIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 1995
- Simulated annealing: Practice versus theoryMathematical and Computer Modelling, 1993
- Performance bounds for concurrent software with rendezvousPerformance Evaluation, 1991
- Optimization of functions with many minimaIEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, 1991
- Fundamentals of Digital SwitchingPublished by Springer Science and Business Media LLC ,1990
- Simulated Annealing: Theory and ApplicationsPublished by Springer Science and Business Media LLC ,1987
- Free buffer allocation — An investigation by simulationComputer Networks (1976), 1978