Just-in-Time Server Provisioning Using Virtual Machine Standby and Request Prediction

Server provisioning is a practical technique to reconfigure a shared server and to improve resource utilization of servers in datacenters and enterprise systems. For the complex systems, however, long process of server provisioning impedes prompt solutions to system problems. This paper proposes a technique to shorten the provisioning processing time after the occurrence of the provisioning request by speculative provisioning execution on a virtual machine as standby. In order to start the provisioning execution in advance, a prediction method for the provisioning request is required. This paper presents a prediction model based on the logistic regression model using system performance metrics. From the evaluation using the actual performance data of enterprise systems, for 50% of the server provisioning requests, the provisioning processing time after the request is shorten over 10 minutes by using the 20-minutes look-ahead request prediction model.