article

A model for characterizing the scalability of distributed systems

Authors:

A Vijay Srinivas,

D. JanakiramAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review, Volume 39, Issue 3

Pages 64 - 71

https://doi.org/10.1145/1075395.1075401

Published: 01 July 2005 Publication History

Abstract

Scalability is an important issue in the construction of distributed systems. A number of theoretical and experimental studies have been made on scalability of distributed systems. However, they have been either studies on specific technologies or have studied scalability in isolation. The main conjecture of our work is that scalability must be perceived along with the related issues of availability, synchronization and consistency. In this context, we propose a scalability model which characterizes scalability as being dependent on these factors as well as the workload and faultload. The model is generic and can be used to compare scalability of similar systems. We illustrate this by a comparison between NFS and AFS, two well known distributed file systems. The model is also useful in identifying scalability bottlenecks in distributed systems. We have applied the model to optimize Virat, a wide-area shared object space that we have built.

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review

ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review Volume 39, Issue 3

July 2005

93 pages

ISSN:0163-5980

DOI:10.1145/1075395

Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2005 Authors.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 July 2005

Published in SIGOPS Volume 39, Issue 3

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Cited By

Frederiksen NL. Møller ETuxen JE. O’Neill SBoesen M(2023)Rapid Scaling of a Danish Public Health System Under COVID-1936th Bled eConference – Digital Economy and Society: The Balancing Act for Digital Innovation in Times of Instability: June 25 – 28, 2023, Bled, Slovenia, Conference Proceedings10.18690/um.fov.6.2023.46(723-730)Online publication date: 12-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.18690/um.fov.6.2023.46
Moura PKon FVoulgaris Svan Steen M(2016)Using Performance Forecasting to Accelerate ElasticityAdaptive Resource Management and Scheduling for Cloud Computing10.1007/978-3-319-28448-4_2(17-31)Online publication date: 8-Jan-2016
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28448-4_2
Muhamad Amin AKhan ANasution B(2012)Event Detection within Fine-Grained NetworksInternet-Scale Pattern Recognition10.1201/b12989-17(157-176)Online publication date: 20-Nov-2012
https://doi.org/10.1201/b12989-17
López MCastro LCabrero DDe Schreye DJanssens GKing A(2012)Declarative distributed advertisement system for iDTVProceedings of the 14th symposium on Principles and practice of declarative programming10.1145/2370776.2370800(185-194)Online publication date: 19-Sep-2012
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Gao JPattabhiraman PBai XTsai W(2011)SaaS performance and scalability evaluation in cloudsProceedings of the Proceedings of 2011 IEEE 6th International Symposium on Service Oriented System Engineering10.1109/SOSE.2011.6139093(61-71)Online publication date: 12-Dec-2011
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