Peak-Based Provisioning
Posted at September 4, 2005 02:00 AM - Category: ASObill
I've been extremely distracted by my colocation plans, so ASObill development has been halted for the moment. However, that hasn't stopped me from thinking about it. The newest idea I've come up with: peak-Based provisioning.
Most other billing software out there that includes control panel integration fills up servers based on a set number of maximum accounts. As a result, the assumption is made that the activity and load generated by each account is constant. In reality, load varies greatly among accounts. So, my initial plan was to build in a load monitoring system into ASObill to monitor load and fill up servers based on system load. This solves the basic problem of overfilling servers and allows for much more automated account provisioning.
However, it's somewhat inefficient because sites often follow a curve of activity between day and night for whatever group of visitors to that site are most popular. Normally, servers are most active during the day in the US and the least active at night. However, there are many sites that peak at different times of the day. And, even in the load-based provisioning system, there is no accounting for this difference in activity.
Improved efficiency in systems would be gained if a site owner could select the time their site is most active and be placed on a server that has the least amount of activity during that time of day. Both sides benefit in this format. The host gets more sites per server or better use of resources on each machine, and the site owner gets a site that is faster when the power is needed most.
Using the order modifier system I've got in place within ASObill, this sort of stuff is simple to implement (although, the math isn't going to be that simple...). I love all this cool stuff I'm building within the ASObill framework. Almost more than the end-user application itself :D
