Processor Usage

[Benjie]

Hi FlexiScale Team,

I really like the idea of your product - it's fantastic! You also have a detailed website, I feel I really understand how this product works...

... except for one thing: processor usage.

We are currently working on a processor intensive product (as you probably well know... XCalibre hosts it on a dedicated server!) At the moment the product is still relatively small, but in order to scale it quickly when necessary, we have been looking at changing over to using FlexiScale.

How does processor sharing work on the FlexiScale system - do you limit each box on CPU cycles? Do you guarantee a number of cycles per second for each box? What is the equivalent speed of a FlexiScale box? If the system has low load, except for our 'box', will our box get even faster processing? How does our 'box' see your processors - dual core? Single? Multi?

If the system is under heavy load (lots of 0.5GB RAM boxes all running flat out on CPU) what performance would our 'box' get?

--
Benjie Gillam
i-together Ltd. (http://www.i-together.com/)
BrainBakery Ltd. (http://www.brainbakery.com/)

[tonylucas]

Benjie,

It's a complicated issue, but I'll get someone to give as detailed a reply as is feasible in the next 24 hours.

Regards,

Tony.

[lazzurs]

Hello Benjie,

To answer your question the FlexiScale platform is constantly monitored at the host level. Each of the host systems has it's CPU usage monitored and if the CPU usage goes above ~80% then the busy servers on that host will be moved to a host with spare CPU capacity. This happens without disruption to the running server.

What this means for yourself is if you need to 'burst' your CPU usage then the platform will adjust to meet your requirements over the short term. If this continues then we will have to recommend you balance your application over more servers.

Now because of this it is hard to provide you with a static definition of the CPU time that you get from your 'box' as you put it however what your system will see is a single CPU. This may however change in the future.

Thanks for the first question to the forums :)

[Benjie]

Hi Lazzurs,

Sounds fantastic! The only further point I wish to raise is: our service is designed to use maximal CPU all the time (well... for two-five minute bursts with two minute gaps in between...). If you give it more CPU time, it will just do updates more frequently, less CPU time and updates are less frequent. Would this cause a problem to us, hosting this project on your servers? Or would you throttle our processor usage?

Also - I see no charges for processor usage, is this right?

Kind regards,

Benjie.

[lazzurs]

First of all hosting your project on our service would not be an issue.

As for the CPU time, yes this would be throttled to not use all of the CPU capacity in the platform however if we are quieter then you will have more room to 'flex'.

Finally there are no charges currently for this extra CPU capacity, however I believe in the future as we allow priority changes there may be extra charges for this.

I hope this answers your questions :)