Engineering performance using control theory

Performance engineering can be viewed as a regulation problem in which performance targets are held within certain bounds. An example of this is ensuring service levels for interactive queries in a database system while guaranteeing a minimum level of progress for administrative utilities. Other engineering disciplines, such as electrical, mechanical, and aeronautic engineering use control theory to do such regulation. This paper provides a brief introduction to control theory, and the paper describes the application of control theory to managing the performance of IBM's Lotus Notes email server and IBM's DB2 database management system.