International Business Machines Corporation

Wuqin Lin

Zhen Liu

Cathy Honghui Xia

Charalambos Stavropoulos

Li Feng Zhang

The invention is a method and apparatus for on-demand resource planning for unified messaging services. In one embodiment, multiple clients are served by a single system, and existing system resources are allocated among all clients in a manner that optimizes system output and service provider profit without the need to increase system resources. In one embodiment, resource allocation and job scheduling are guided by individual service level agreements between the service provider and the clients that dictate minimum service levels that must be achieved by the system. Jobs are processed in a manner that at least meets the specified service levels, and the benefit or profit derived by the service provider is maximized by prioritizing incoming job requests within the parameters of the specified service levels while meeting the specified service levels. Thus, operation and hardware costs remain substantially unchanged, while system output and profit are maximized.

Method and apparatus for on-demand resource allocation and job management

Techniques are provided for determining a capacity allocation in a multi-tiered computing system. In one aspect of the invention, a technique for designing capacity allocation for a multi-tiered computing system, each tier of the computing system having one or more computing devices (e.g., servers), comprises the following steps/operations. Input parameters relating to capacity allocation are obtained. A capacity allocation is computed based on at least a portion of the input parameters, the capacity allocation being computable such that one or more end-to-end performance measures are substantially satisfied for multiple service classes. The capacity allocation computation may minimize a cost function. The capacity allocation computation may also satisfy one or more mean delay guarantees for the multiple service classes, one or more tail distribution guarantees for the multiple service classes, or both one or more mean delay guarantees and one or more tail distribution guarantees for the multiple service classes.

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Briarcliff Manor, NY, United States of America

Wuqin Lin