Risk management for video-on-demand servers leveraging demand forecast
Di Niu, Hong Li Xu, Baochun Li, Shuqiao Zhao · 2011
Video-on-demand (VoD) servers are usually over-provisioned for peak demands, incurring a low average resource efficiency. However, bandwidth shortage may still occur for individual videos as they share and contend for server resources. In this position paper, we propose a predictive workload management system for VoD servers targeting bandwidth. The system draws belief about future demand as well as demand volatility based on demand history using time series forecasting techniques. The prediction enables dynamic and efficient server bandwidth reservation with QoS guarantees. More importantly, we use a hedging technique similar to investment portfolio management and distribute workloads to multiple servers exploiting demand anti-correlation. The proposed system consolidates the workloads, enhances resource utilization, while in the meantime effectively controlling risk of server overload. The proposed methods are evaluated based on real-world VoD traces.