Feedback Control for Computer Systems

From the Back Cover

How can you take advantage of feedback control for enterprise programming? This book demonstrates how the same principles that govern cruise control in your car also apply to data center management and other enterprise systems. Through case studies and hands-on simulations, you’ll learn methods to solve several control issues, including mechanisms to spin up more servers automatically when web traffic spikes (“auto-scaling”).

Feedback is ideal for controlling large, complex systems, but its use in software engineering raises unique issues. This book provides basic theory and lots of practical advice for programmers with no previous background in feedback control.

Table of Contents:

1. Why Feedback? An Invitation
2. Feedback Systems
3. System Dynamics
4. Controllers
5. Identifying Input and Output Signals
6. Review and Outlook
7. Theory Preview
8. Measuring the Transfer Function
9. PID Tuning
10. Implementation Issues
11. Common Feedback Architectures
12. Exploring Control Systems Through Simulations
13. Case Study: Cache Hit Rate
14. Case Study: Ad Delivery
15. Case Study: Scaling Server Instances
16. Case Study: Waiting-Queue Control
17. Case Study: Cooling Fan Speed
18. Case Study: Controlling Memory Consumption in a Game Engine
19. Case Study Wrap-Up
20. The Transfer Function
21. Block-Diagram Algebra and the Feedback Equation
22. PID Controllers
23. Poles and Zeros
24. Root Locus Techniques
25. Frequency Response and the Bode Plot
26. Topics Beyond This Book

Links:

• Buy at Amazon
• Catalog Page at O’Reilly
• Downloads on Github