Adaptable SLA-Aware Consistency Tuning for Quorum-Replicated Datastores

Users of distributed datastores that employ quorum-based replication are burdened with the choice of a suitable client-centric consistency setting for each storage operation. The above matching choice is difficult to reason about as it requires deliberating about the tradeoff between the latency and staleness, i.e., how stale (old) the result is. The latency and staleness for a given operation depend on the client-centric consistency setting applied, as well as dynamic parameters such as the current workload and network condition. We present OptCon, a machine learning-based predictive framework, that can automate the choice of client-centric consistency setting under user-specified latency and staleness thresholds given in the service level agreement (SLA). Under a given SLA, OptCon predicts a client-centric consistency setting that is matching, i.e., it is weak enough to satisfy the latency threshold, while being strong enough to satisfy the staleness threshold. While manually tuned consistency settings remain fixed unless explicitly reconfigured, OptCon tunes consistency settings on a per-operation basis with respect to changing workload and network state. Using decision tree learning, OptCon yields 0.14 cross validation error in predicting matching consistency settings under latency and staleness thresholds given in the SLA. We demonstrate experimentally that OptCon is at least as effective as any manually chosen consistency settings in adapting to the SLA thresholds for different use cases. We also demonstrate that OptCon adapts to variations in workload, whereas a given manually chosen fixed consistency setting satisfies the SLA only for a characteristic workload.