Overtime: a tool for analyzing performance variation due to network interference

Shared networks create unique challenges in obtaining consistent performance across jobs for large systems when not using exclusive system-wide allocations. In order to provide good system utilization, resource managers allocate system space to multiple jobs. These multiple independent node allocations can interfere with each other through their shared network. This work provides a method of observing and measuring the impact of network contention due to interference from other jobs through a continually running benchmark application and the use of network performance counters. This is the first work to measure network interference using specially designed benchmarks and network performance counters.