Multi-tier Internet service management: Statistical learning approaches

Modern Internet services are multi-tiered and are typically hosted in virtualized shared platforms. While facilitating flexible service deployment, multi-tier architecture introduces significant challenges for Quality of Service (QoS) provisioning in hosted Internet services. Complex inter-tier dependencies and dynamic bottleneck tier shift are challenges inherent to tiered architectures. Hard-to-predict and bursty session-based Internet workloads further magnify this complexity. Virtualization of shared platforms adds yet another layer of complication in managing the hosted multi-tier Internet services.;We consider three critical aspects of Internet service management for improved performance and quality of service provisioning : admission control, dynamic resource provisioning and service differentiation. This thesis concentrates on statistical learning based approaches for multi-tier Internet service management to achieve efficient, balanced and scalable services. Statistical learning techniques are capable of solving complex dynamic problems through learning and adaptation with no priori domain-specific knowledge. We explore the effectiveness of supervised and unsupervised learning in managing multi-tier Internet services.;First, we develop a session based admission control strategy to improve session throughput of multi- tier Internet services. Using a supervised bayesian network, it achieves coordination among multiple tiers resulting in a balanced service. Second, we promote session-slowdown, a novel session-oriented metric for user perceived performance. We develop a regression based dynamic resource provisioning strategy, which utilizes a combination of offline training and online monitoring, for session slowdown guarantees in multi-tier systems. Third, we develop a reinforcement learning based coordinated combination of admission control and adaptive resource management for multi-tier Internet service differentiation and performance improvement in a shared virtualized platform. It addresses limitations of supervised learning by integrating model-independence of reinforcement learning and self-learning of neural networks for system scalability and agility. Finally, we develop an user interface based Monitoring and Management Console, intended for an administrator to monitor and fine tune the performance of hosted multi-tier Internet services.;We evaluate the developed management approaches using an e-commerce simulator and an implementation testbed on a virtualized blade server system hosting multi-tier RUBiS benchmark applications. Results demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of statistical learning approaches for QoS provisioning and performance improvement in virtualized multi-tier Internet services.