Capacity Planning for Web Services: Metrics, Models, and Methods (Paperback)

by Daniel A. Menasce (Author), Virgilio A.F. Almeida (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
The world's #1 book on Web capacity planning has now been completely revamped to reflect the latest Web services and e-commerce applications, and the latest techniques and technologies for supporting them. In this book, two of the world's leading Web capacity planning experts show how to precisely quantify potential and real performance problems, and address them proactively. Daniel A. Menasce and Virgilio A.F. Almeida introduce quantitative performance predictive models for every major Web scenario -- especially the latest Web services, e-commerce, and mobile applications. The book's extensive coverage of Web services includes protocols and interaction models; unique performance, reliability, and availability challenges; and new capacity planning methodologies. Menasce and Almeida introduce the fundamentals of performance and capacity planning in any client/server environment; specific issues associated with HTTP and TCP/IP protocols; and typical workloads. They demonstrate how to benchmark current performance at both the system and component level; plan future capacity; define service level agreements; accommodate peak usage; and manage tradeoffs between cost and performance.

From the Back Cover

The #1 guide to Web capacity planning -- now completely updated!

• A quantitative analysis of Web service availability
• An integrated coverage of benchmarking, load testing, workload forecasting, and performance modeling of Web services
• Example and case studies show how to use each technique in the latest Web services, portals, search engines, mobile and streaming-media applications
• A quantitative framework for planning the capacity of Web services and understanding their behavior

The world's #1 book on Web capacity planning now covers the latest Web services, e-business, and mobile applications! Capacity Planning for Web Services: Metrics, Models, and Methods introduces quantitative performance predictive models for every major Web scenario, showing precisely how to identify and address both potential and actual performance problems. Coverage includes:

• Web services: protocols, interaction models, and unique performance, reliability, and availability challenges
• State-of-the-art capacity planning methodologies
• Spreadsheets implement the solutions of the models presenteed in the book
• Specific issues and workloads associated with HTTP and TCP/IP protocols
• Benchmarking current performance at system and component levels

From accommodating current usage peaks to defining service provider SLAs, Daniel A. Menasce and Virgilio Almeida cover every aspect of capacity planning — helping you optimize every tradeoff between cost and performance.

"This bookis the best guide available to understanding the uniqueperformance challenges involved in delivering today's Web services." — Mark Crovella,Associate Professor, Boston University;
Technical Director, Network Appliance

"...asuperb starting point for anyone wishing to explore the world of Web performance."— Jeffrey P. Buzen, President of CMG;
Co-Founder, BGS Systems

"There is no other book like this. It is a first." — Peter J. Denning, Professor of Computer Science, George Mason University and former President of the ACM

"Web servers have bursty andhighly-skewed load characteristics. This book presents a new way tomodel, analyze, and plan for these new performance problems." — Jim Gray, Senior Researcher, Microsoft Research;
1998 ACM Turing Award Recipient

"...a welcome approach to the performance analysis of today'sWeb-based Internet. ... no simple and practical treatment has been offered before, andtheirs is a timely contribution." — Leonard Kleinrock, Professor of Computer Science, UCLA;
Chairman and Founder, Nomadix, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 608 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR; Rev Sub edition (September 21, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0130659037
• ISBN-13: 978-0130659033
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #528,550 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Old friend gets facelift and becomes more beautiful, July 5, 2002

By	Mike Tarrani "www.tarrani.com" (Deltona, FL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

Although the title is new, this book is based on the authors' 1998 book titled "Web PErformance Metrics, Models and Methods (ISBN 0136938221). This book is more than a minor rewrite - the chapters are in a different sequence, and each has been updated. None of the information that made the older book such a valuable resource was lost in the process. For example, the material on queuing theory and analysis remains, and it among the best written tutorials in print. What has changed includes:

(1) Shifting of focus from client/server and web server environments to web services, with an emphasis on performance characteristics of SOAP and UDDI. Client server issues are still covered because these issues are still germane.

(2) An emphasis on architecture and how performance and capacity fit into a larger picture. Network and server performance characteristics are examined in detail.

What hasn't changed includes the excellent material on performance and benchmarking basics, detailed analysis techniques, and the support for this book that the authors provide on the book's web site. I especially like the Excel spreadsheets that you can download to use in conjunction with material in nearly every chapter.

Overall, this is one more of a series of books on various aspects of performance and capacity management. I also recommend reading their companion book, "Scaling for E-Business: Technologies, Models, Performance, and Capacity Planning" (ISBN 0130863289), which covers the applications level of e-commerce systems and seamlessly complements the material in this book.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars for actual deployment of Web Services, December 7, 2004

By	W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

As Web Services get implemented, this book can be a vital tool in planning for the deployment. The authors have a rigorous methodology to estimate the many performance issues encountered when you try to build out an actual Web Service. They discuss important ideas like content delivery networks, which cache or mirror content at different physical locations, so that the response time to a user's query is minimised. And it also adds redundancy. Think Akamai, for instance.

A crucial aspect they explain is how to develop a cost model for a data centre facing a certain expected rate of queries coming in from the net. Practical advice on what things to cost out and how to do so, as shown in various examples.

Most books on Web Services published after this book often discuss the networking together of various services. Using WSDL or BPEL to describe these configurations. BPEL may not have even existed in 2001 when the book was published. But the book is certainly not outdated. Nothing in it is tied to a specific version of a Web Services grammar. Those other books are more about explaining the syntax. Few delve into actual deployment scaling issues that cannot be avoided if you have to go live.