Generic SDE and GA-based workload modeling for cloud systems

Workload models are typically built based on user and application behavior in a system, limiting them to specific domains. Undoubtedly, such a practice creates a dilemma in a cloud computing (cloud) environment, where a wide range of heterogeneous applications are running and many users have access to these resources. The workload model in such an infrastructure must adapt to the evolution of the system configuration parameters, such as job load fluctuation. The aim of this work is to propose an approach that generates generic workload models (1) which are independent of user behavior and the applications running in the system, and can fit any workload domain and type, (2) model sharp workload variations that are most likely to appear in cloud environments, and (3) with high degree of fidelity with respect to observed data, within a short execution time. We propose two approaches for workload estimation, the first being a Hull-White and Genetic Algorithm (GA) combination, while the second is a Support Vector Regression (SVR) and Kalman-filter combination. Thorough experiments are conducted on real CPU and throughput datasets from virtualized IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS), Web and cloud environments to study the efficiency of both propositions. The results show a higher accuracy for the Hull-White-GA approach with marginal overhead over the SVR-Kalman-Filter combination.