Chargeback in the Cloud - The Movie

If you were unable to attend the live presentation on cost-effective defenses against chargeback in the cloud, or simply can't get enough performance and capacity analysis for the AWS cloud (which is completely understandable), here's a direct link to the video recording on CMG's YouTube channel.

The details concerning how you can do this kind of cost-benefit analysis for your cloud applications will be discussed in the upcoming GCAP class and the PDQW workshop. Check the corresponding class registration pages for dates and pricing.

Virtual cloudXchange 2018 Conference

Our abstract has been accepted for presentation at the FREE cloudXchange online event to be held by CMG on June 19th at 10am Pacific (5pm UTC). [Extended slides]

Exposing the Cost of Performance
Hidden in the Cloud

Neil Gunther
Performance Dynamics, Castro Valley, California

Mohit Chawla
Independent Systems Engineer, Hamburg, Germany

10am Pacific Time on June 19, 2018

Whilst offering lift-and-shift migration and versatile elastic capacity, the cloud also reintroduces an old mainframe concept—chargeback—which rejuvenates the need for performance analysis and capacity planning. Combining production JMX data with an appropriate performance model, we show how to assess fee-based EC2 configurations for a mobile-user application running on a Linux-hosted Tomcat cluster. The performance model also facilitates ongoing cost-benefit analysis of various EC2 Auto Scaling policies.

CMG Atlanta: Southbound for the Deep South

I will be at the CMG Greater Atlanta Spring conference on April 27, 2011. I was asked to cover something for both veterans and newcomers to capacity planning—along the lines of my Guerrilla Boot Camp classes. So, here's what I came up with.

Guerrilla CaP for Noobs and Nerds
Whether you're a newbie (noob) or a veteran (nerd) when it comes to capacity planning (CaP) and performance analysis, it never hurts to revisit the fundamentals. However, some CaP concepts that are touted as fundamental are actually myths. Here are some myths I hear all too often.

What's NOT:

1. We don't need no stinkin' CaP, just more cheap servers.
2. CPU utilization should never exceed 70% busy.
3. A well-consolidated server should have no idle cycles.
4. Throughput and latency are independent metrics that must be measured separately.
5. Optimal response time is achieved at the knee of the curve.
6. If you can measure it, you can manage it.

During my twin session I will take these myths apart to expose the facts in terms of

What's HOT^†:

1. If the app is single-threaded, a boat-load of cheap servers from China won't help.
2. A 64-way server running 70% busy is 25% underutilized.
3. A consolidated server may need to be under 10% busy to meet app SLAs.
4. Throughput and latency are inversely related ... always!
5. Response time knees are an optical illusion.
6. All performance measurements are wrong by definition.

Along the way, I'll offer some Guerrilla mantras, as seen in my Guerrilla book and generated automatically on Twitter. You can use them as weapons of mass instruction to bust any other myths held by your colleagues and managers, whether you're a noob or nerd.

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† With apologies to Paris Hilton.

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Data + Models == Insight

Al Bundy, of the TV show Married with Children, understood it and performance engineers should too. What am I talking about? The theme music for that show is the tune "Love and Marriage" as sung by Frank Sinatra. Just like the song says about love and marriage, so it is with measurements and models ... You can't have one without the other.

Gunther Interview - Part II

As a consequence of winning the A.A. Michelson Award at CMG'08, I was interviewed for CMG MeasureIT e-zine. The second installment appears in this month's issue. Free access, but requires sign-up if you're not already registered.


As you can see, I still have my Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments, although it's showing signs of wear by now. It's open at the one experiment I could never get to work; making rayon. I'm now inclined to think there might be a bug in the recipe, but that never occurred to me back then. I just wanted to make it in the worst way.

Barry3-Apdex Also Lives in R

As a by-product of my presentation on the Apdex Index at the NorCal CMG meeting, back in February, Guerrilla graduate, Stephen O'Connell, went off and did an implementation in R. You can read about it in this month's CMG MeasureIT and download his R-script. Free access, but requires sign-up if you're not already a member.

Gunther Interview - Part I

As a consequence of winning the A.A. Michelson Award at CMG'08, I was interviewed for CMG MeasureIT e-zine. The first installment appears in this month's issue. Free access, but requires sign-up if you're not already a member.

NorCal CMG Meeting Location

For those of you who haven't attended before, the Feb 3rd (Tues) meeting of the Northern California CMG will be held in Suite 100 of the Compuware building in Pleasanton, California. Here's the Google map. Three talks will be presented:

• 9:30--10:30 Mongo Measurement Requires Mongo Capacity Management, Neil Gunther, Performance Dynamics Company
  
• 10:45--11:45 Wasted MIPS, Wanton MIPS: a MIPS Recovery Initiative, Tom Halinski, Compuware Corporation
  
• 1:00--2:00 The Apdex Index Revealed, Neil Gunther, Performance Dynamics Company
  

Breakfast starts at 8:30 am and registration is $25 at the door.

NorCal CMG Meeting Feb 3, 2009

If you're in the neighborhood, I'll be giving two talks:

1. "Mongo Measurement Requires Mongo Capacity Management"
   
2. "The Apdex Index Revealed"
   

at the next meeting of the Northern California Computer Measurement Group.

CMG 2008 Boot Camp Sessions

Those of you who attended my Capacity Planning Boot Camp sessions at CMG 2008, may have noticed that something got lost in the translation between my original notes and what landed on your CMG CD. The corrected slides, including updated hyperlinks, are now available as PDFs from my CMG Materials page.

If you didn't attend CMG 2008, but you'd like to know more about capacity management techniques, consider coming to my 2-day Guerrilla Boot Camp class in 2009.

Gunther Receives A.A. Michelson Award

At the annual CMG International Conference in Las Vegas last week, Dr. Neil Gunther was the recipient of the prestigious A.A. Michelson Award; the industry's highest honor for computer performance analysis and capacity planning. As he said in his acceptance speech, it was the fulfillment of a dream he had entertained at his first CMG Conference in 1993.

My CMG 2008 Presentations

1. Sunday Workshop: "How High Will It Fly? Predicting Scalability"
   Session 184, Sunday 8:30 AM - Noon
   Room: Champagne 3/4
   

Podcast: "Diving into Capacity Planning"

A podcast that I did for TeamQuest Corporation, back in December, is now available. It's a somewhat unconventional take on the motivations for doing CaP, based on taking into account the apparently frustrating but otherwise very realistic perspective of management. During the podcast, I refer to the CMG Keynote given by Jerred Ruble (CEO of TeamQuest Corp.) Here is the abstract of his presentation entitled, "Is Capacity Planning Still Relevant?" (click to enlarge)

Simple registration required to download the 25 MB mp3 file. This podcast also gives you an idea of some the things we will be treating in the Guerrilla Boot Camp class on April 28-29, 2008.

CMG 2008: Call for PerfViz Papers

It's official! Performance visualization is a "focus area" within the Hot Topics Session Area track for CMG 2008 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The official CFP is now posted and Jim Holtman and I are the Session Area Chairs (SACs) for Hot Topics. In an attempt to build of the recent success of the Barry007 presentations at CMG 2007, we would like to see many more diverse contributions on PerfViz: Better computer performance and planning through better visualization tools, in 2008.

Apdex Meets Apex

The Apdex Alliance has defined a performance metric, called the Apdex index, which rates the measured response times of distributed applications from an Internet user perspective. The Apdex index is constructed from three categories which are defined by partitioning the total number of sample counts (C) according to an agreed upon threshold time (τ):

1. Satisfied (0 < S < τ)
2. Tolerating (τ < T < 4τ)
3. Frustrated (F > 4τ)
   

My CMG 2007 Presentation Schedule

This year, all CMG 2007 sessions will be held in the Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego starting Sunday, December 2 and going through Friday, December 7. Currently, my sessions are scheduled as follows:

More on Moore

In an opinion piece in this month's CMG MeasureIT e-zine, I examine what is possibly going on behind the joint IBM-Intel announcement and the imminent release of 45 nm 'penryn' parts in CMOS.

Some related blog entries are:

• Programming Multicores Ain't Easy
  
• More On Penryn
  
• Moore's Law II: More or Less?
  

Overview of Virtualization Performance

As the Guest Editor for this month's MeasureIT e-zine on the topic of virtualization, a compliation of articles is presented from both earlier MeasureIT authors as well as some papers from the CMG conference proceedings. Titles include:

• Visualizing Virtualization


• It May Be Virtual - But the Overhead is Not


• A Realistic Assessment of the Performance of Windows Guest Virtual Machines


• Measuring CPU Time from Hyper-Threading Enabled Intel Processors


• Hyperthreading - Two for the Price of One?


• To V or Not to V: A Practical Guide To Virtualization


• The Virtualization Spectrum from Hyperthreads to GRIDs

This issue of MeasureIT is unique in my mind because it is rare to find, in one place, such a broad collection of performance perspectives centered on the intensely hot topic of virtualization.

CMG 2007 Hot Topics Call

I am the Session Area Chairperson for Hot Topics at CMG 2007 this year. Proposed topics include, but are not limited to: SOA, Web Services, Virtualization, RFID, Server Consolidation, Gaming performance, Blade Servers, Grid Computing, Clustering, Performance visualization, and Emerging Technologies.

If you have a hot topic you'd like to present or know of someone else that might, please let me know about it either by posting here or contacting me via email. Thank you.