Benchmark-Based Cost Analysis of Auto Scaling Web Applications in the Cloud

Applications executed in the cloud can exploit its elasticity features, varying dynamically the amount of leased resources so as to adapt to load variations and to guarantee good quality of service. As auto scaling has severe implications on execution costs, making optimal scaling choices is of paramount importance. This paper presents an analysis method based on off-line benchmarking that allows to define scaling policies to be used by auto-scalers. The indexes obtained by benchmarking multiple deployment configurations can be used on-line, to scale the application making a trade-off between cost and user-perceived performance.