Efficient engineered systems require scalability. A scalable system has increasing performance with size. In an ideal case, the increase in (e.g., speedup) corresponds to number of units that are added system. However, if multiple work on same task, then coordination among these is required. This can introduce overheads impact performance. The costs lead sublinear improvement or even diminishin...

Applications deployed on the Internet are immediately accessible to a vast population of potential users, and as a result they tend to experience unpredictable and widely fluctuating demand. System administrators currently face a provisioning dilemma to address this demand: whether to (1) waste money by heavily overprovisioning systems, or (2) risk loss of availability during times of high dema...