Modeling and Empirical Validation of Reliability and Performance Trade-Offs of Dynamic Routing in Service- and Cloud-Based Architectures

• Published in: IEEE transactions on services computing Vol. 15; no. 6; pp. 3372 - 3386
• Main Authors: Amiri, Amirali, Zdun, Uwe, van Hoorn, Andre
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01.11.2022; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Analytical models; Cloud computing; Cloud-based computing; Computational modeling; Computer architecture; dynamic routing architectures; Empirical analysis; Model accuracy; Modelling; Multiple regression analysis; Predictive models; Regression models; Reliability; Reliability analysis; Routers; Routing; service-based applications; Software reliability; System reliability; Tradeoffs
• ISSN: 1939-1374; 1939-1374; 2372-0204
• DOI: 10.1109/TSC.2021.3098178

Context: Various patterns of dynamic routing architectures are used in service- and cloud-based environments, including sidecar-based routing, routing through a central entity such as an event store, or architectures with multiple dynamic routers. Objective: Choosing the wrong architecture may severely impact the reliability or performance of a software system. This article's objective is to provide models and empirical evidence to precisely estimate the reliability and performance impacts. Method: We propose an analytical model of request loss for reliability modeling. We studied the accuracy of this model's predictions empirically and calculated the error rate in 200 experiment runs, during which we measured the round-trip time performance and created a performance model based on multiple regression analysis. Finally, we systematically analyzed the reliability and performance impacts and trade-offs. Results and Conclusions: The comparison of the empirical data to the reliability model's predictions shows a low enough and converging error rate for using the model during system architecting. The predictions of the performance model show that distributed approaches for dynamic data routing have a better performance compared to centralized solutions. Our results provide important new insights on dynamic routing architecture decisions to precisely estimate the trade-off between system reliability and performance.