Dynamic Surge Protection: An Approach to Handling Unexpected Workload Surges with Resource Actions that Have Lead Times

Today’s information technology departments have widely varying demands for resources due to unexpected surges in subscriber demands (e.g., a large response to a product promotion). Further complicating matters is that many resource actions done in response to surges (e.g., provisioning or de-provisioning an application server) have substantial delays (lead times) between initiating the resource action and its taking effect. This paper describes dynamic surge protection, an approach to handling unexpected workload surges in systems that have lead times for resource actions. Dynamic surge protection incorporates three technologies: adaptive short-term forecasting, on-line capacity planning, and configuration management. The paper includes empirical results from evaluations done on a research testbed, including favorable comparisons with a thresholdbased heuristic. The results from an extended test also show that service objectives can be maintained cost-effectively.