The technologies, called Adaptive Forecasting, Rapid Reconfiguration, and Online Capacity Planning, have been developed jointly by IBM’s Research Division and Software Group, and are being adapted by IBM Global Services to be included in its offerings.
The technologies are designed to predict sudden increases in workload and automatically increase server capacity to handle the increased load, while also freeing up capacity as demand decreases. IBM said that they have been built to work alongside version 5 of its WebSphere Application Server software and version 8 of its DB2 database management system, and also have the potential to be used with other applications and platforms.
The adaptive forecasting technology uses mathematical models and a model adaptation scheme to anticipate the demand surges, according to IBM, while the online capacity planning technology provides estimates of the resources required to respond to surges while maintaining service levels.
The online capacity planning technology also enables the hot swap of resources between workloads to respond to demand spikes, while the rapid reconfiguration technology exploits capabilities in WebSphere Application Server to add new nodes.
The recently released WebSphere 5.0 added self-healing capabilities to analyze transaction patterns to spot potential faults, as well as self-configuration to allow the application server to make recommendations over levels of performance for groups of users or specific applications, and automatically search-out and cluster with other servers running WebSphere 5.0.
IBM has not given any details about when these technologies may make their way into generally available products. The technologies will better enable the company to offer capacity upgrade and downgrade-on-demand capabilities, which are currently being offered to customers through customized service deals, and take the company another step toward its vision of e-business-on-demand.
Source: Computerwire
