Grant: Applied Research and Development Grants - Level 1

This project is the first step in the design, construction and test of a new layer of game server software than canoptimize and monitor in real-time the WTFast game services. It stems from the observation that game serversplace demands on computing resources - hardware and network - that can vary with user behaviour and whoseoptimization is the key to customer satisfaction. Virtualized servers provide new flexibility in hardwarereservation and allocation but their use can make resource optimization difficult by making it context sensitivei.e. dependent on the allocation of virtual machines (VMs) to hardware.The project's objective is to study predictive monitoring and optimization for game server clusters. The firstphase of the project will gather performance data about game servers, then analyze its time behaviour to allowthe creation of a performance-prediction software module. The initial module version applies virtualized gameservers in various configurations, and later versions will be tested with physical servers as well as parallel(cluster) game servers. Later, the project will investigate performance optimization based on short-termpredictions.