Feedback control with queueing-theoretic prediction for relative delay guarantees in web servers

Abstract The use of feedback control theory for performanceguarantees in QoS-aware systems has gained much attention in recent years. In this paper, we investigate merging,within a single framework, the predictive power of queueing theory with the reactive power of feedback control toproduce software systems with a superior ability to achieve QoS specifications in highly unpredictable environments.The approach is applied to the problem of achieving relative delay guarantees in high-performance servers. Experimen-tal evaluation of this approach on an Apache web server shows that the combined schemes perform significantly bet-ter in terms of keeping the relative delay on target compared to feedback control or queueing prediction alone.