System and method for CPU bandwidth allocation

• US 20040255295A1
• Filed: 06/12/2003
• Published: 12/16/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 06/12/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Vaidyanathan, Paramesh, Gupta, Sujoy, Priya A.B., Padma, Babu T.V., Narendra, Agarwal, Abhishek, Valiyaparambil, Manoj K., Stackhouse, Christian Paul
• Granted Patent: US 7,437,728 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 718/100
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5066 Algorithms for mapping a plurality of inter-dependent sub-tasks onto a plurality of physical CPUs mappping at compile time, see G06F8/451

Abstract

An automatic resource management service implements a policy to automatically control resource usage by processes running on a computer. A policy expresses criteria for identifying process sets, and imposes allocations and sub-allocations or resource amounts to be used by given process sets and subsets. Exclusion lists are used in an embodiment of the invention to exclude processes from management by the management service. In an embodiment of the invention the resources whose use is managed are CPU resources, although in further embodiments the managed resources include memory resources as well.

Claims

1. A management service for managing the use of one or more resources by one or more processes running on a computing device comprising:

a data interface to a database for automatically obtaining a process resource usage policy and for automatically obtaining historical process resource usage information pertaining to past usage by the one or more processes of the one or more resources;

a system interface to a system performance facility for obtaining current process resource usage information pertaining to current usage by the one or more processes of the one or more resources; and

a control interface to a system control facility for automatically controlling future usage by the one or more processes of the one or more resources in accordance with the policy.

2. The management service according to claim 1, wherein the system interface interfaces to a system performance counter.

3. The management service according to claim 1, wherein the control interface interfaces to a system CPU scheduler.

4. The management service according to claim 1, wherein the policy obtained via the data interface is specified by a user of the management service via a user interface.

5. The management service according to claim 1, wherein the policy obtained via the data interface is specified in a policy schedule, the schedule being created by a user of the management service via a user interface.

6. The management service according to claim 1, wherein the policy obtained via the data interface comprises:

one or more criteria sets, each criteria set defining criteria for process membership in one or more respective process sets; and

one or more allocations, each allocation defining a desired resource usage for at least one of the one or more process sets.

7. The management service according to claim 6, wherein the criteria for process membership in one or more respective process sets include at least one criterion selected from the group consisting of a path used to initiate the process, a name of a program creating the process, a command line option used to run the process, a command line parameter used to run the process, a user name of an account associated with the process, and a group name associated with a group to which a user associated with the process belongs.

8. The management service according to claim 6, wherein the one or more allocations define a portion of CPU resources to be used by the at least one of the one or more process sets.

9. The management service according to claim 6, wherein the one or more allocations define a type and portion of memory resources to be used by the at least one of the one or more process sets.

10. The management service according to claim 1, wherein the data interface to the database is further adapted for automatically obtaining one or more exclusion lists, the one or more exclusion lists defining one or more processes whose resource usage is not managed by the management service.

11. The management service according to claim 10, wherein the one or more exclusion lists comprise a user exclusion list and a system exclusion list, the user exclusion list being specified by a user of the management service and the system exclusion list being unmodifiable by the user.

12. A computer-readable medium having stored thereon computer-executable instructions corresponding to the management service according to claim 1.

13. A method of creating a resource policy defining one or more resource usage limitations for one or more processes respectively, the method comprising:

receiving a user-defined resource policy, wherein the user-defined resource policy comprises one or more criteria sets defining criteria for process membership in one or more respective process sets, and one or more allocations defining a desired resource usage for at least one of the one or more process sets; and

supplementing the user-defined resource policy by automatically identifying a default process set for which no allocation is defined in the user-defined resource policy and allocating to the default process set those resources not allocated to any other process set by the user-defined resource policy.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprising:

further supplementing the user-defined resource policy by automatically identifying a subset of a particular process set defined by the user-defined resource policy, wherein the particular process set is associated with a resource allocation in the user-defined resource policy, but wherein the subset is not associated with a resource allocation in the user-defined resource policy; and

automatically generating a resource allocation for the identified subset based on a predetermined criterion.

15. A computer-readable medium having stored thereon computer-executable instructions for executing the steps of the method according to claim 13.

16. A method of automatically managing resource usage for a plurality of processes running on a computing device, each process being associated with a respective system priority that that defines the process'"'"'s priority of access to resources, the method comprising:

retrieving a resource usage policy defining a plurality of desired resource allocations for a respective plurality of process sets;

determining the current resource usage of processes in a particular process set;

determining the past resource usage of processes in the particular process set;

if the current resource usage is less than the resource allocation for the particular process set, and if the past resource usage for a predetermined past period is consistently less than the resource allocation for the particular process set, raising the priorities associated with all processes of the particular process set by a first increment;

if the current resource usage is less than the resource allocation for the particular process set, and if the past resource usage for a predetermined past period is not consistently less than the resource allocation for the particular process set, raising the priorities associated with all processes of the particular process set by a second increment, wherein the second increment is less than the first increment; and

automatically lowering the desired resource allocation for the particular process set by a decrement amount and raising the resource allocation for at least one other process set by the decrement amount.

17. The method according to claim 16, wherein the decrement amount corresponds to a difference between the resource allocation for the particular process set and the determined current resource usage of processes in the particular process set.

18. The method according to claim 16, wherein automatically lowering the desired resource allocation for the particular process set by a decrement amount and raising the resource allocation for at least one other process set by the decrement amount further comprises:

identifying a plurality of sibling process sets that share a common parent set with the particular process set, each of the plurality of sibling process sets having a desired resource allocation defined by the policy;

assigning a portion of the resource allocation of the particular set to each sibling process set to create respective resource reallocations for the sibling process sets, such that the mutual proportions of the resource reallocations of the sibling process sets are substantially the same as the resource allocations of the sibling process sets.

19. The method according to claim 18 further comprising:

waiting for expiration of a predefined period;

upon expiration of the predefined period, determining the current resource usage of the sibling processes;

identifying an underutilizing sibling process set that is using fewer resources than permitted by its resource reallocation; and

distributing a portion of the resource reallocation of the underutilizing sibling process to the other sibling processes.

20. A computer-readable medium having stored thereon computer-executable instructions for executing the steps of the method according to claim 16.