CS723/823 Homepage Fall 2009

Computer Science 723/823
Performance Evaluation of Computer Systems

Homepage:	http://www.cs.unh.edu/~varki/courses/cs823f09/overview.html
Lecture:	TR: 9:40-11:00
	in N133 Kingsbury Hall

Professor:	Elizabeth Varki
Office:	N211B Kingsbury Hall
Phone:	862-2319
Email:	varki@cs.unh.edu
OfficeHours:	Tuesday: 11:10-12:00
	Thursday: 11:10-12:00
	or by appointment, or whenever you find me in my office (knock if my office door is closed).

Prerequisite:	CS620 (or an equivalent introductory operating systems class) and an introductory probability class.

Text:	Performance by Design: Computer Capacity Planning by Example, by D. Menasce, V. Almeida, and L. Dowdy, Prentice-Hall, (2004).

Grading:	weekly quizzes (drop 1): 30%
	assignments: 25%
	project with a partner: 20%
	comprehensive final exam: 25%

Tentative Schedule:

Fundamentals (3 weeks) - introduction into capacity planning, performance metrics, computer system lifecycle, service levels, terminology, queuing network models, baby probability, elementary Markov models, descriptive models, [ MAD chapters 1, 2, and 10]
Basic Performance Models (3 weeks) - operational analysis laws, stochastic analysis, workload characterization, clustering techniques, open systems, birth/death systems, Little's Law, A/B/C/D/F queues, networks of queues, balance equations [MAD chapters 3, 4, and 11]
Intermediate Performance Models (3 weeks) - closed systems, normalization constants, convolution, non-exponentials, single/multi-class models, bottleneck analysis, performance bounds, mean value analysis, decomposition/aggregation, flow equivalent servers [MAD chapters 12 and 13]
Case Studies (3 weeks) - database servers, web servers, data centers, e-business, help-desk service [MAD chapters 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9]
Advanced Modeling Topics (3 weeks) - load dependent models, non product-form models, priority scheduling, memory modeling, disk modeling, channel modeling, overhead modeling [MAD chapters 14 and 15]
Class Project Presentations (1 week)
Comprehensive Final Exam - Tuesday, December 15th, 10:30-12:30, N133 Kingsbury Hall.