On the Construction of a Representative Synthetic Workload
A general method of constructing a drive workload
representative of a real workload is described. 
The real workload is characterized by its demands on the
various system resources.  These characteristics 
of the real workload are obtained from the system accounting
data. The characteristics of the drive workload 
are determined by matching the joint probability density
of the real workload with that of the drive 
workload.  The drive workload is realized by using a
synthetic program in which the characteristics can 
be varied by varying the appropriate parameters. Calibration
experiments are conducted to determine expressions 
relating the synthetic program parameters with the workload
characteristics.  The general method is applied 
to the case of two variables, cpu seconds and number
of I/O activities; and synthetic workload with 88 
jobs is constructed to represent a month's
workload consisting of about 6000 jobs.
CACM March, 1974
Sreenivasan, K.
Kleinman, A. J.
