Last month Wiley was proud to publish Quantitative Assessments of Distributed Systems: Methodologies and Techniques by Dario Bruneo and Salvatore Distefano. It is essential to have proper metrics and tools in order to assess the modeling and evaluation of distributed systems from Cloud computing to Big Data.
Distributed systems employed in critical infrastructures must fulfill dependability, timeliness, and performance specifications. Since these systems most often operate in an unpredictable environment, their design and maintenance require quantitative evaluation of deterministic and probabilistic timed models. This need gave birth to an abundant literature devoted to formal modeling languages combined with analytical and simulative solution techniques
The aim of this book is to provide an overview of techniques and methodologies dealing with such specific issues in the context of distributed systems and covering aspects such as performance evaluation, reliability/availability, energy efficiency, scalability, and sustainability. Specifically, techniques for checking and verifying if and how a distributed system satisfies the requirements, as well as how to properly evaluate non-functional aspects, or how to optimize the overall behaviour of the system, are all discussed in the book. The scope has been selected to provide a thorough coverage on issues, models. and techniques relating to validation, evaluation and optimization of distributed systems. The key objective of this book is to help to bridge the gaps between modeling theory and the practice in distributed systems through specific examples.
1. Congratulations on the publication of your book, Quantitative Assessments of Distributed Systems: Methodologies and Techniques which provides an overview of techniques and methodologies dealing with such specific issues in the context of distributed systems and covering aspects such as performance evaluation, reliability/availability, energy efficiency, scalability, and sustainability. How did the writing process begin? Have you worked together before?
Yes, we were co-authors in several works. Until 2011 we also worked together at University of Messina. Through our mutual colleague, Professor Misra we heard about the possibility of this book which immediately we considered a perfect chance to put our background, experience, and 10 years of research into.
2. What were your main objectives during the writing process?
The book was an edited book so one of the first objective was to define the list of hot topics in distributed system modeling and evaluation and to organize them in order to have a good “storyboard”. Then we started contacting the major experts in the field to ask them to be part of the project.
Throughout the book, you focus on techniques for checking and verifying if and how a distributed system satisfies the requirements, as well as how to properly evaluate non-functional aspects, or how to optimize the overall behaviour of the system.
3. If there was one piece of information or advice that you would want your author to take away and remember after reading this, what would that be?
The importance of merging both theoretical/methodological and technical/practical aspects in their contributions, as well as, from a different perspective, to meet deadlines in writing an edited book!
4. Who should read the book and why?
In our idea, the main readers should be researchers with some background in Quality of Service and performance evaluation techniques that wish to start working on distributed system modeling and evaluation.
However, the book could be also used by PhD students with a curriculum in modeling and dependability analysis or in design and analysis of distributed systems. Finally, practitioners in the industry could find useful guidelines and references in the capacity planning of IT infrastructures.
This book can be considered one of the most updated review of the state of the art on dependability analysis of distributed systems and it contains chapters from the main experts on such a sector.
5. Why is this book of particular interest now?
This book can be considered one of the most updated review of the state of the art on dependability analysis of distributed systems and it contains chapters from the main experts on such a sector.
6. Were there areas of the book that you found more challenging to write, and if so, why?
The book was an edited book. So the more challenging task was to coordinate all the contributors in order to have a coherent organization.
7. What is it about this particular area that fascinates you?
Dealing with the complexity and largeness of distributed systems is very challenging and “cool” now, since new IT trends, such as Cloud computing, IoT, Big Data, citizen science, service oriented computing, need proper metrics and tools for their modeling and evaluation. This is particularly true when a technology, e.g. the Cloud, is settled in its basic mechanisms. The challenge then shifts towards (advanced) policies for improving the quality of the delivered services, which requires proper tools for evaluating the policy impacts also considering dynamic and variable operating conditions.
8. Please could you us tell more about your educational backgrounds and your subsequent careers?
DB: I received a degree in Computer Engineering from the Engineering Faculty of the University of Palermo (Italy) in 2000. From 2001 to 2002 I worked as a researcher at the Research and Development Laboratory of the Italian company “Engineering Ingegneria Informatica (S.p.A)” focusing my research on mobile (intelligent) agents. Then, from 2002 to 2004 I attended the PhD course in “Advanced Technologies for Information Engineering” at the University of Messina discussing a PhD Thesis titled “Advanced Services Provisioning in Mobile Wireless Networks: QoS Strategies and Middleware Solutions”. In February 2006, I won a public competition and he obtained the position of Assistant Professor in Computer Engineering (ING-INF/05) at the Engineering Faculty of the University of Messina.
SD: I received a degree in Computer Engineering from University of Catania (Italy) in 2001. Then I moved to Messina, starting a research collaboration in 2002 as research assistant, and then as a PhD student at the University of Messina. Even if never interrupted, the collaboration with University of Messina officially lasted till 2011 as PostDoc, because of in October 2011 I won a public competition and became Assistant Professor in Computer Engineering (ING-INF/05) at the Department of Electronics and Information of Politecnico di Milano, Italy. Recently I also obtained a position of Professor and head of the Social and Urban Computing Lab from Kazan Federal University, Russia. My main research interests include non-Markovian modelling; performance and reliability evaluation; dependability; Quality of Service/Experience; Service Level Agreement; Parallel and Distributed Computing, Grid, Cloud, Autonomic, Volunteer, Crowd Computing; Big Data; Citizen Science; Software and Service Engineering. I have been involved in several national and international research projects and am the author and co-author of more than 120 scientific papers and on the editorial board of a number of journals.