TITLE:
Performance Evaluation Approach for Multi-Tier Cloud Applications
AUTHORS:
Arshdeep Bahga, Vijay K. Madisetti
KEYWORDS:
Performance Modeling; Synthetic Workload; Benchmarking; Multi-Tier Applications; Cloud Computing
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Software Engineering and Applications,
Vol.6 No.2,
February
28,
2013
ABSTRACT: Complex multi-tier applications deployed in cloud
computing environments can experience rapid changes in their workloads. To
ensure market readiness of such applications, adequate resources need to be
provisioned so that the applications can meet the demands of specified workload
levels and at the same time ensure that service level agreements are met.
Multi-tier cloud applications can have complex deployment configurations with
load balancers, web servers, application servers and database servers. Complex
dependencies may exist between servers in various tiers. To support
provisioning and capacity planning decisions, performance testing approaches
with synthetic workloads are used. Accuracy of a performance testing approach
is determined by how closely the generated synthetic workloads mimic the
realistic workloads. Since multi-tier applications can have varied deployment
configurations and characteristic workloads, there is a need for a generic
performance testing methodology that allows accurately modeling the performance
of applications. We propose a methodology for performance testing of complex
multi-tier applications. The workloads of multi-tier cloud applications are captured
in two different models-benchmark application and workload models. An
architecture model captures the deployment configurations of multi-tier
applications. We propose a rapid deployment prototyping methodology that can
help in choosing the best and most cost effective deployments for multi-tier applications
that meet the specified performance requirements. We also describe a system
bottleneck detection approach based on experimental evaluation of multi-tier
applications.