Predictable Data Centers

  • Hitesh Ballani | Cornell University

The Predictable Data Centers (PDC) project tackles the issue of unpredictable application performance in the cloud. A key contributor to such unpredictability is shared resources like network and storage. The bandwidth for a VM, when communicating with other VMs or with shared services (like Azure storage), can vary significantly; recent studies have observed bandwidth variability up to a factor of five. To address this, we have designed a predictable data center architecture whereby users get aggregate performance guarantees across shared resources. This talk provides a project overview with a focus on how predictable network and storage performance can be enabled. Through key scenarios of interest, I will illustrate how PDC can- (i) enable end-to-end performance guarantees in shared settings, (ii) provide performance benefits to both tenants and providers, and (iii) enable new pricing models that lead to a symbiotic tenant-provider relationship.

Speaker Details

Hitesh Ballani is a Ph.D. student in computer science at Cornell University. He received his B.Tech degree from IIT, Roorkee, India in 2003. His research interests are in networked systems with his work striking a balance between clean-slate and dirty-slate proposals. Past projects include research in network management, routing, security and network architecture.

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