Constraint Mechanisms

Constraints allow the administrator or application developer to set bounds on the consumption of specific resources for a workload. With known bounds, modeling resource consumption scenarios becomes a simpler process. Bounds can also be used to control ill-behaved applications that would otherwise compromise system performance or availability through unregulated resource requests.

Constraints do present complications for the application. The relationship between the application and the system can be modified to the point that the application is no longer able to function. One approach that can mitigate this risk is to gradually narrow the constraints on applications with unknown resource behavior. The resource controls feature discussed in Chapter 6, Resource Controls (Overview) provides a constraint mechanism. Newer applications can be written to be aware of their resource constraints, but not all application writers will choose to do this.