Workload-driven systems optimization: things are getting real!

In this talk, I will describe how workload-driven system optimization has quickly evolved from a researcher's dream into a production reality. In particular, I will provide a high-level overview of a large collection of efforts that build upon careful telemetry collection and analysis to tune and optimize large-scale distributed systems in production at Microsoft. While the opportunities are staggering (e.g., improving system efficiencies to the tune of 10s of millions of dollars per year), the challenges are equally daunting. I will discuss some of the ways we handle the challenges at MS and point at open problems along the way.