Setup Times in Multiserver Systems: New Insights

Abstract: Capacity management, whether it involves servers in a data center, human staff in a call center, or doctors in a hospital, is largely about balancing a resource-delay tradeoff. On the one hand, one would like to turn off servers when not in use (or send home staff that are idle) to save on resources. On the other hand, one wants to avoid the considerable setup time required to turn an off server back on. In this talk, we describe recent work focused on understanding the delay component of this tradeoff. In particular, we discuss both 1) new results characterizing the average delay in the M/M/k with Deterministic setup times and 2) new insights into how to mitigate the additional delay caused by setup times.

Bio: Jalani is currently a first-year President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at the University of Michigan, where he is mentored by Prof. Lei Ying. Before coming to Michigan, he received his PhD in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon, advised by Prof. Weina Wang. Broadly, Jalani is interested in using his expertise in applied probability and decision-making under uncertainty to guide the development of robust and performant systems, from reinforcement learning agents to modern data centers.

*** This Event will take place in a hybrid format. The location for in-person attendance will be room 1311 EECS. Attendance will also be available via Zoom.

Join Zoom Meeting: https://umich.zoom.us/j/93679028340

Meeting ID: 936 7902 8340

Passcode: XXXXXX (Will be sent via e-mail to attendees)

Zoom Passcode information is also available upon request to Kristi Rieger([email protected])