ALLOCATING OPERATORS OF A STREAMING APPLICATION TO VIRTUAL MACHINES BASED ON MONITORED PERFORMANCE

• US 20150256478A1
• Filed: 05/15/2014
• Published: 09/10/2015
• Est. Priority Date: 03/07/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Bragstad, Lance, Branson, Michael J., Cao, Bin, Carey, James E., Odden, Mathew R.
• Granted Patent: US 9,503,334 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/32 with visual or acoustical indication of the functioning of the machine
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3404 for parallel or distributed programming
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3409 for performance assessment
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3442 for planning or managing the needed capacity
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2009/45562 Creating, deleting, cloning virtual machine instances
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/81 Threshold
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/815 Virtual middleware or OS functionality using virtual machines to implement generic software techniques for error detection or fault masking G06F11/1484
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/865 Monitoring of software
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/45558 Hypervisor-specific management and integration aspects
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/0806 for initial configuration or provisioning, e.g. plug-and-play
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 41/40 using virtualisation of network functions or resources, e.g. SDN or NFV entities
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 43/04 Processing captured monitoring data, e.g. for logfile generation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 47/783 Distributed allocation of resources, e.g. bandwidth brokers
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 65/60 Network streaming of media packets

Abstract

Performance thresholds are defined for operators in a flow graph for a streaming application. A streams manager deploys the flow graph to one or more virtual machines (VMs). The performance of each portion of the flow graph on each VM is monitored. A VM is selected. When the performance of the portion of the flow graph in the selected VM does not satisfy the defined performance threshold(s), a determination is made regarding whether the portion of the flow graph is underperforming or overperforming. When the portion of the flow graph is underperforming, the portion of the flow graph is split into multiple portions that are implemented on multiple VMs. When the portion of the flow graph is overperforming, a determination is made of whether a neighbor VM is also overperforming. When a neighbor VM is also overperforming, the two VMs may be coalesced into a single VM.

Claims

1. An apparatus comprising:

at least one processor;

a memory coupled to the at least one processor;

a streaming application residing in the memory and executed by the at least one processor, the streaming application comprising a flow graph that includes a plurality of operators that process a plurality of data tuples;

a plurality of performance thresholds residing in the memory for the plurality of operators in the flow graph; and

a streams manager residing in the memory and executed by the at least one processor, the streams manager deploying the flow graph on at least one virtual machine (VM), monitoring performance of the streaming application, and when performance of a first portion of the streaming application in a selected VM does not satisfy at least one of the plurality of performance thresholds, the streams manager determines when the first portion of the streaming application in the selected VM is overperforming, and when the first portion of the streaming application in the selected VM is overperforming and when a second VM that has an operator in a second portion of the flow graph that communicates with an operator in the first portion of the streaming application in the selected VM is also overperforming, the streams manager coalesces the first portion and the second portion to run on a single VM.

2. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein when performance of the first portion of the streaming application in the selected VM does not satisfy the at least one of the plurality of performance thresholds, the streams manager determines when the first portion of the streaming application in the selected VM is underperforming, and when the first portion of the streaming application in the selected VM is underperforming, the first portion of the streaming application in the selected VM is split into third and fourth portions of the streaming application that are deployed to a plurality of VMs.

3. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the streams manager initially deploys the flow graph on a single VM.

4. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the streams manager deploys the flow graph to the plurality of VMs by requesting a cloud manager provision the plurality of VMs, and after the cloud manager provisions the plurality of VMs, the streams manager deploys the flow graph to the plurality of VMs.

5. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the plurality of performance thresholds includes at least one threshold that indicates when at least one operator in the flow graph is underperforming.

6. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the plurality of performance thresholds includes at least one threshold that indicates when at least one operator in the flow graph is overperforming.

7. The apparatus of claim 1 wherein the streams manager continuously monitors performance of all portions of the flow graph and dynamically changes allocation of portions of the flow graph that are underperforming by splitting at least one portion of the flow graph to different VMs and changes allocation of portions of the flow graph that are overperforming by coalescing at least one portion of the flow graph to a single VM.