PerfCenter: a performance modeling tool for application hosting centers

We present a tool, PerfCenter, which can be used for performance oriented deployment and configuration of an application in a hosting center, or a "data center". While there are a numb er of tools which aid in the process of performance analysis during the software development cycle, few tools are geared towards aiding a data center architect in making appropriate decisions during the deployment of an application. PerfCenter facilitates this process by allowing specification in terms that are natural to a data center architect. Thus, PerfCenter takes, as input, the number and "specs" of hosts available in a data center, the network architecture of geographically diverse data centers, the deployment of software on hosts, hosts on data centers, and the usage information of the application (scenarios, resource consumption), and provides various performance measures such as scenario response times, and resource utilizations. We describe the PerfCenter specification, and its performance analysis utilities in detail, and illustrate its use in the deployment and configuration of a Webmail application.