Analysis of Join-the-Shortest-Queue Routing in Web Server Farms

Mor Harchol-Balter
Computer Science Department
Carnegie Mellon University


Wednesday, April 4, 2007
4:30 - 5:30 PM
Terman Engineering Center, Room 453


Abstract:

We present the first analysis of the Join-the-Shortest-Queue task assignment policy for Web server farms. Web server farms involve Processor-Sharing servers. This work introduces a new technique: Single-Queue-Approximation (SQA), and uses the technique to prove some interesting insensitivity properties for Web server farms.

Joint work with Varun Gupta, Karl Sigman, and Ward Whitt.

Bio:

Mor Harchol-Balter is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. She received her doctorate from the Computer Science department at U.C. Berkeley under the direction of Manuel Blum. She is a recipient of the McCandless Chair, the NSF CAREER award, the NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Mathematical Sciences, multiple best paper awards, and several teaching awards, including the Herbert A. Simon Award for Teaching Excellence. Professor Harchol-Balter is heavily involved in the ACM SIGMETRICS research community. Her work focuses on designing new scheduling/resource allocation policies for various distributed computer systems including Web servers, distributed supercomputing servers, networks of workstations, and database systems. She currently serves as Treasurer of the SIGMETRICS board, and as Program Chair for ACM SIGMETRICS 2007 and for QEST 2007.

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