Varsha Apte

Professor, CSE, IIT Bombay

This graphic shows the essential problem that all my research efforts try to address. My core interest and expertise is in solving performance modeling and management problems using Queuing Systems and other Stochastic Models. Whenever possible I prefer applying rigourous analytical techniques for analysis and control of performance, rather then empirical techiniques. I like to build tools that facilitate and simplify the process of applying such techniques.

Over the last nearly 20 years, I have worked in overload control of Web servers, Wireless LAN performance models, control theoretic QoS control of Wireless LAN and Web servers, performance modeling and measurement multi-tier data center applications. My current interests are in applying my core skills to performance modeling and management of virtualized systems, clouds, and power managed systems.

Publications

Google Scholar Link
Best Paper Award in ICPE 2017 for: Apte, Varsha, T. V. S. Viswanath, Devidas Gawali, Akhilesh Kommireddy, and Anshul Gupta. "AutoPerf: Automated load testing and resource usage profiling of multi-tier internet applications." In Proceedings of the 8th ACM/SPEC on International Conference on Performance Engineering, pp. 115-126. 2017.

PerfCenter and AutoPerf: Tools developed at IIT Bombay

• PerfCenter is a performance modeling tool that accepts the hardware and software architecture description of a multi-tier application and generates and solves the underlying queueing network, to provide estimates of performance metrics.
• AutoPerf is a performance measurement tool that generates load on a Web site, and produces measured performance metrics. Its distinguishing features are (a) its ability to generate server resource usage profiles per transaction and (b) its ability to carry out a performance test with minimal input configuration.

Funded research

• My research has been funded by various industry sponsors such as Tata Consultancy Services, IBM, Intel IT, Netapp and Amazon.