Using Mini-Flash Crowds to Infer Resource Constraints in Remote Web Servers

Unexpected surges in request traffic (e.g., Flash crowds) can exercise server-side resources such as access bandwidth, CPU, and disks in unanticipated ways. Administrators today do not have the requisite tools to fully understand the effect that flash crowds can have on server-side resources. As a result, most Web-servers today rely on significant over-provisioning, strict admission control, or alternatively use potentially expensive solutions like CDNs to provide high availability under load. A more ne-grained understanding of the performance of servers under emulated but controlled flash crowd like conditions can guide administrators to make more efficient provisioning and resource management decisions.