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Dynamic Allocation in Honey Bee and Internet Server Colonies. Sunil Nakrani, Computing Lab., University of Oxford, England, UK Craig Tovey, ISyE, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA. Natural Systems Research & Education.
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Dynamic Allocation in Honey Bee and Internet Server Colonies Sunil Nakrani, Computing Lab., University of Oxford, England, UK Craig Tovey, ISyE, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA
Natural Systems Research & Education • Honey bee colony foraging (Bartholdi, Seeley, Tovey & VandeVate, J. Th. Bio. 1993); food storing to cue nectar intake (Seeley & Tovey, Animal Beh. 1993) • Dominance hierarchy formation (Chase, Tovey, et al., Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci 2002, Behaviour 2003); natural selection mechanism • Biomimetic heuristic for allocating resources in a web-hosting facility (Nakrani & Tovey, Proc. MASI II, 2003) • Time lags and overdiscounting of environmental costs, hedging value of environmental investments; replacement policies under technological change (Regnier, Sharp & Tovey, IE Trans.) • Assessing systems (Tovey, Ausenda); adjusting GDP for natural systems deterioration • Sustainability intro in sophomore course (2030); topics course on root causes of env. problems and sustainability (4833); stat and design sustainability projects OR -> BIO BIO -> OR OR -> ENV
Introduction • Web-Hosting Facility • Rationale • Benefits • Server Allocation Problem: allocate servers amongst web-apps to maximize revenue • Honey Bee Colony: allocate foragers amongst flower patches to maximize nectar intake
Introduction • Approach: Honey Bee Heuristics-waggle dance • Map web-apps to flower patches, servers to bees • Solution Mapping: dance floor--> advert board • Algorithms and Simulation Model • Results • Conclusions, biological insight • Future work
Web-Hosting Facility Internet Hosting Center Users Web-App
Web-Hosting Model • Benefits: • Economy of scale: Resource sharing means increase in utilization and better availability • Web-App shielded from over-provisioning
Web-Hosting Optimisation • Web-App: pay-per-use Service Level Agreement (SLA) • Hosting Center: Allocate servers among Web-Apps to “maximize” revenue (s.t. changeover downtime) • Users: Unpredictable and highly variable request pattern
Web-Hosting Optimisation • Server Allocation Problem: Allocate servers among web-Apps to “maximize” revenue
Server Allocation Problem • Current Techniques: Threshold and Ad-hoc Rule based, Continuous tracking of load metrics by large operations staff, Manual management • Static provisioning altered approx. once a month • Current Literature– Jayram et. al. (2001), Chase et. al. (2001) • Commercial Domain: Proprietary methods
Honey Bee Colony • Approx. 20-50 thousand bees in a colony • One queen • Few drones • Rest workers
Honey Bee Colony • Typically requires 60 lb of honey per year to survive • 25% of workers engaged in food collection (nectar, pollen) • Exploit food sources (flower patches) from surrounding countryside
Honey Bee Colony • Flower Patches: • Availability varies daily and seasonally; • Quality depends on exploitation, flower type, micro-climate etc.. • Round trip time (nectar collection time) • Colony: Exploit flower patches efficiently to satisfy nectar requirement
Forager Allocation Problem • Forager Allocation Problem: Allocate forager bees among flower patches to “Maximize” nectar intake
Server Allocation Problem: Single Server Web-Apps + User Group of servers (cluster) serving users at one web-app Forager Allocation Problem: Forager Bee Flower Patches Group of foragers collecting nectar at a specific flower patch Problem Mapping
Server Allocation Problem: Request service time depends on Web-App Find a user to serve Forager Allocation Problem: Travel Time depends on Flower Patch Nectar collection time at the patch Problem Mapping
Server Allocation Problem: Value-Per-Request-Served Varying rates of user request arrivals and balking behaviors Forager Allocation Problem: Nectar quality (sugar content) Varying flower patch density, quality, and replenishment rate Problem Mapping
Server Allocation Problem: Server Migration Time (purge current Web-App and load new Web-App) Forager Allocation Problem: Time to learn the location of the flower patch and successful discovery (Seeley, T.D.) Problem Mapping
Forager Allocation Mechanism • Active foragers return to the hive with nectar and profitability rating of the visited flower patch • Interact with food-storer bees to offload nectar (waiting time provides feedback on nectar flow into the hive)
Forager Allocation Mechanism: • Feedback sets threshold for enlisting signal (Waggle Dance) • Profitability + signal threshold = Waggle dance duration
Forager Allocation Mechanism: • Waggle dance performed just inside the hive entrance (Dance floor) • foragers follow dance to learn flower patch location • Suboptimal allocation in static sense
OPTIMUM fi0(xi) = l8 i2 A xi = 0 8 i Ï A equalize marginal return at active patches BEE HEURISTIC fi(xi)/xi = m8 i2 A xi = 0 8 i Ï A equalize average return at active patches fi(xi) ´return from xi bees at patch i Max åi fi(xi) s.t. xi¸ 0åi xi· N
Properties of Heuristic Solution(from BSTV 93) Usually not optimal Factor-2 approximation even under very weak conditions Convergence proved by potential function argument Validated experimentally in a honey bee colony
Server Allocation Advert Advert Board Advert Duration Reading an Advert Forager Allocation Waggle Dance Dance Floor Dance Duration Following Waggle Dance Solution Mapping
Simulation Model: Honey Bee Web-App: A Post/Read Adverts Users: A Web-App ID Duration Time Advert Board Repurpose Migrate Web-App ID Duration Time Users: B Post/Read Adverts Web-App: B
Simulation Model: Greedy Web-App: A Users: A New Policy Compute optimal policy for next interval based on present queue status, present allocation, and user arrival from last interval Repurpose Migrate Users: B New Policy Web-App: B
Simulation Model: Greedy St = state of world at start period t (customers,servers) At = arrivals (times, types) in period t P(p, S, A) = profit using p from state S with arrivals A f(p,S,A) = next state of world using p from S with arrivals A ptG = arg maxp P(p, St, At-1) St+1 = f(ptG, St, At)
Simulation Model: Others Web-App: A Users: A New Policy Offline Omniscient Computation Repurpose Migrate Users: B New Policy Web-App: B
Simulation Model: Omniscient Optimum S=state, A=arrival, P( )=profit, f( )=next state A1,L, An known vn+1(Sn+1) = 0 (no salvage value) vt (St) = maxp{P(p,St,At) + vt+1(f(p,St,At))} ptOpt(St) = arg maxp {P(p,St,At) + vt+1(f(p,St,At))}
Omniscient Optimum Computation • Parallel implementation runs in 24 hours • Discretized space of possible states • Inner loop function that we maximize is theoretically concave … … but not concave numerically
Simulation Model: Optimal-Static S=state, A=arrival, P( )=profit, f( )=next state A1,L, An known s.t. St+1 = f(p, St, At)
Conclusions • Bee heuristic: works well, effective in highly dynamic environment • Competitive against standard heuristics • Bee heuristic: Not tuned, Common sense scaling parameters used
Conclusions • Trade-off static optimality for responsiveness • Static optimization requires equalization of derivatives (marginal rate bee) • Bee heuristic has no marginal “bee” but, instead, has ability to migrate several “bees” at the same time and avoids problem of measuring f’ under variability
Conclusions Patch II Patch I 900 500 Nectar intake increases if: 899 501
Future Work • Test to see if we were lucky or robust • Scale up to more patches/web-apps • Make autonomic --more feedback loops • Power … imitate indolent bees? • Convergence rates • Compare with IBM’s online network algorithm
Some other interesting stuff • Dominance hierarchies: first experimental validation of a self-organizing social structure in animals (Chase, Tovey, Martin & Manfredonia 02) • Time lags of environmental costs: mean 10 years vs. mean 5 years for other types. (Regnier & Tovey) • Opportunities for Sr. Design sustainability projects
Some Big OR Questions in Natural Systems • Individual versus group selection: classic argument against latter is essentially an OR proof, but why do forests thrive? • Discounting and EPV, intergenerational equity and intraperiod utility. Relationship to future growth? Intraperiod utility and discounting is almost equivalent to linear utility, Sobel 2000