A bayesian approach to online performance modeling for database appliances using gaussian models

In order to meet service level agreements (SLAs) and to maintain peak performance for database management systems (DBMS), database administrators (DBAs) need to implement policies for effective workload scheduling, admission control, and resource provisioning. Accurately predicting response times of DBMS queries is necessary for a DBA to effectively achieve these goals. This task is particularly challenging due to the fact that a database workload typically consists of many concurrently running queries and an accurate model needs to capture their interactions. Additional challenges are introduced when DBMSes are run in dynamic cloud computing environments, where workload, data, and physical resources can change frequently, on-the-fly. Building an efficient and highly accurate online DBMS performance model that is robust in the face of changing workloads, data evolution, and physical resource allocations is still an unsolved problem. In this work, our goal is to build such an online performance model for database appliances using an experiment-driven modeling approach. We use a Bayesian approach and build novel Gaussian models that take into account the interaction among concurrently executing queries and predict response times of individual DBMS queries. A key feature of our modeling approach is that the models can be updated online in response to new queries or data, or changing resource allocations. We experimentally demonstrate that our models are accurate and effective -- our best models have an average prediction error of 16.3% in the worst case.