DICER: Diligent Cache Partitioning for Efficient Workload Consolidation

Workload consolidation has been shown to achieve improved resource utilisation in modern datacentres. In this paper we focus on the extended problem of allocating resources when co-locating High-Priority (HP) and Best-Effort (BE) applications. Current approaches either neglect this prioritisation and focus on maximising the utilisation of the server or favour HP execution resulting to severe performance degradation for BEs. We propose DICER, a novel, practical, dynamic cache partitioning scheme that adapts the LLC allocation to the needs of the HP and assigns spare cache resources to the BEs. Our evaluation reveals that DICER successfully increases the system's utilisation, while at the same time minimising the impact of co-location on HP's performance.