Using Overload Prevention Mechanisms

When we have a small set of services, misbehaving applications generally cause small problems. This is because there is usually an overabundance of network capacity to absorb badly behaving applications within a data center, and with a small set of services, it is usually intuitive to figure out what would cause the issue.

When we have a large number of applications running, our network and our machines are usually oversubscribed. Oversubscribed means that our network and systems cannot handle all our applications running at 100%. Oversubscription is common in networks or clusters to control costs. This works because, at any given time, most applications ebb and flow with network traffic, central processing unit (CPU), and memory.