Search arXivSearch

arXiv · 2204.09437

Search-based Methods for Multi-Cloud Configuration

Abstract

Multi-cloud computing has become increasingly popular with enterprises looking to avoid vendor lock-in. While most cloud providers offer similar functionality, they may differ significantly in terms of performance and/or cost. A customer looking to benefit from such differences will naturally want to solve the multi-cloud configuration problem: given a workload, which cloud provider should be chosen and how should its nodes be configured in order to minimize runtime or cost? In this work, we consider solutions to this optimization problem. We develop and evaluate possible adaptations of state-of-the-art cloud configuration solutions to the multi-cloud domain. Furthermore, we identify an analogy between multi-cloud configuration and the selection-configuration problems commonly studied in the automated machine learning (AutoML) field. Inspired by this connection, we utilize popular optimizers from AutoML to solve multi-cloud configuration. Finally, we propose a new algorithm for solving multi-cloud configuration, CloudBandit (CB). It treats the outer problem of cloud provider selection as a best-arm identification problem, in which each arm pull corresponds to running an arbitrary black-box optimizer on the inner problem of node configuration. Our experiments indicate that (a) many state-of-the-art cloud configuration solutions can be adapted to multi-cloud, with best results obtained for adaptations which utilize the hierarchical structure of the multi-cloud configuration domain, (b) hierarchical methods from AutoML can be used for the multi-cloud configuration task and can outperform state-of-the-art cloud configuration solutions and (c) CB achieves competitive or lower regret relative to other tested algorithms, whilst also identifying configurations that have 65% lower median cost and 20% lower median time in production, compared to choosing a random provider and configuration.

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Małgorzata Łazuka, Thomas Parnell, Andreea Anghel, Haralampos Pozidis. 2022-04-20. Search-based Methods for Multi-Cloud Configuration. https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.09437

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

Concertina: Data-Centric Adaptive Pipeline Parallelism for Efficient Heterogeneous Long-Context LLM Training

Long context training is crucial for extending LLM context windows. Existing schemes, such as sequence parallelism, incur substantial communication overhead. Pipeline parallelism (PP) reduces this cost, but its effectiveness hinges on partitioning granularity. Batch-level PP employing sequence packing exhibits high memory consumption in long-context scenarios, whereas token-level PP splitting sequences into slices alleviates memory overhead but may introduce performance degradation. Moreover, the skewed sequence-length distribution in real-world datasets defeats any monolithic, static choice of PP granularity. In this paper, we propose \textit{Dynamic Pipeline Parallelism} (DPP), which transforms PP granularity from a static design choice into a workload-adaptive optimization space over packed, split, and hybrid chunks. DPP further introduces a new coupling between heterogeneous pipeline scheduling and gradient checkpointing. To solve this coupling, \name co-optimizes dynamic chunk scheduling with \textit{Stage-Aware Chunk-Level Adaptive Checkpointing}. Comprehensive experiments demonstrate that \name achieves up to 1.69\texttimes\ speedup over FlexSP and up to 1.40\texttimes\ over MEPipe. The source code is available at https://github.com/wsjdsg/InfiniPipe-code.

cs.DC

A Low-Latency Semantic State Estimator using Latent Predictive Learning for Dynamic Network Monitoring and Orchestration

Closed-loop network monitoring and orchestration increasingly require semantic interpretations of live telemetry beyond raw counter collection. However, dynamic cloud-edge environments change both the active node set and the monitoring query at runtime, while control loops demand bounded millisecond-scale responses. We introduce a latent predictive state estimator (LPSE) for dynamic network monitoring and orchestration, built on latent predictive learning over streaming telemetry. The framework converts variable-cardinality node telemetry into topology-adaptive temporal representations, fuses them with monitoring questions, and returns bounded answers from a semantic codebook instead of autoregressive text generation. This design enables fixed-cost, single-pass inference while preserving semantic interpretability. By operating on permutation-invariant, slot-routed node representations keyed by stable identity, the model maintains a fixed input space and generalizes to node addition, removal, and reordering without retraining. Experimental results on a multi-node Kubernetes cluster show semantic prediction accuracy of 87.13% at approximately 72x lower mean inference latency compared to the lowest latency LLM tested.

cs.DC

X-Stage: Modeling Post-Issue Backpressure in GPU Communication--Computation Fusion

Fine-grained, device-initiated communication allows fused GPU kernels to issue remote stores directly from their compute pipelines, a pattern increasingly used in expert parallelism (EP), tensor parallelism (TP), and Ulysses-style sequence parallelism (UP). Existing designs reason about where communication is issued and when remote data becomes ready, but lack a quantitative model of the sender-side interval after a remote store is accepted and before it becomes visible at the destination. This interval determines whether communication remains decoupled from computation or backpressures it. We identify X-Stage, a software-visible post-issue stage with finite decoupling. Downstream pressure can dissipate while the issuer resumes useful work, whereas sustained injection consumes X-Stage headroom and eventually stalls the compute pipeline. We characterize this behavior and build a calibrated model that predicts whether remote-store arrivals accumulate backpressure or recover during intervening computation. Guided by the model, we reshape bursty arrivals when they would exhaust X-Stage headroom and exploit natural compute windows when headroom can recover concurrently. Evaluation across representative EP, TP, and UP workloads shows up to 1.62x fused-kernel, 1.75x end-to-end, and 1.43x sender-visible speedup, respectively. Microbenchmarks further validate the model's predictions of backlog accumulation, recovery, and sender-side backpressure.

cs.DC