Event-Based Control and Estimation of Server Systems

Feedback control is increasingly being applied in server systems to make them more robust and efficient. This includes managing quality of service, minimizing power consumption, and adapting to varying workloads. Successful adaptation and control in turn relies on accurate tracking of workload variations and timely detection of changes in the computing infrastructure. Given that server systems are inherently event based, it is natural to consider event-based control and estimation schemes for them. As a prototypical problem, we study a single server system with time-varying arrival rate and derive optimal switching rules for the service rate. The goal is to keep the response time within bounds while minimizing the energy consumption of the server. We also design an event-based estimator of the server states using a particle filter approach. Finally, we outline some research challenges related to event-based control and information fusion in server systems.