AI Seminar
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    Wednesday 5 November 2003
    11:30 am - 12:30 pm
    175 ATL (Large Conference Room)

    "Optimal Resource Allocation for Large Data Centers"

    Terence Kelly
    Internet Systems and Storage Laboratory
    Hewlett-Packard Laboratories

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The problem of resource allocation---determining the
quantities of available resources devoted to various
applications---is fundamental to the management of
large computing centers.  In such environments optimal
decisionmaking is a source of competitive advantage,
and modern enterprise computing demands an adaptive
infrastructure that automatically allocates resources
to maximize business value for the enterprise.

This talk describes an approach to optimal resource
allocation based on mathematical programming.  I will
present a simple problem formulation that allows us to
express how applications generate business value from
resources in a natural and straightforward way.  This
formulation also allows us to incorporate in a unified
framework seemingly unrelated concerns ranging from
operating costs to SLA violation penalties.  An off-the-
shelf commercial optimizer can compute near-optimal
solutions to problem instances of practical size in
under one second.

To date I have considered the case of a single decisionmaker
faced with the problem of optimally allocating resources
across heterogeneous applications.  My ongoing research
considers the more general case in which applications
correspond to multiple self-interested parties, and draws
on relevant economic theory.

A technical report describing preliminary work is available
at  http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2003/HPL-2003-115.html