Allocation of resources in your computing environment

Computing resources are not infinite and must be allocated intelligently and efficiently. Resources such as CPU power, memory, and disk space are limitations in any computing environment. In a personal computing environment, you would run out of disk space if you had an extremely large collection of music, or an extremely large collection of movies, or other similar media.

Similarly, at the enterprise level, if there was a lot of data duplication, such as the same files being stored on different computers, the disk space resource would be used up quickly, resulting in inefficient utilization of disk space, since that the same data would be replicated. This can be resolved by purchasing a virtual storage disk and having all computers access the data on that storage disk. Of course, other issues would arise, such as which user could edit the file, and which user’s edits would override other users’ edits. Solving these problems would be much more efficient in terms of resource allocation than duplicating data across computing environments.

Another computing resource is the processor. A central processing unit (CPU) (formerly also known as a central processing unit) is the hardware within a computer that carries out the instructions of a computer program by performing the basic arithmetic, logical, and input/output operations of the system. . Modernly almost all CPUs are multi-processing, ie. they have multiple processing units within them and can process multiple tasks at once. Also, the processing performance of computers is increased through the use of multi-core processors, which essentially connect two or more individual processors together on an integrated circuit. Ideally, a dual core processor would be almost twice as powerful as a single core processor. Despite significant progress in advancing processing power, a single task can block all of the processing power in a computing environment and block other tasks if CPU power is not allocated efficiently. For example, if you told the computer to compute the largest possible prime number (which is essentially impossible to do), the computer’s CPU would be locked at infinity.

An efficient way to allow a computer system to function at an efficient capacity is to allocate resources to different users. Another way is to assign each user a percentage of the resources. For example, if there are 5 users and 5 GB of available disk space, you can allocate 10% to each user, regardless of what that user uses, ie. 500 MB, regardless of actual usage, or alternatively, you can allocate the full 5 GB to each user and monitor activity and set restrictions based on usage patterns. Every computing environment is different and decisions should be based on the unique facts and usage patterns of users.

CPU allocation is more complicated if there are multiple users using the same computing environment and some users have time-critical processes, such as payment gateway systems, if one user hogs all the CPU, the other users may be locked out. Consequently, a fixed CPU allocation would be beneficial in such cases. However, the CPU is much harder to scale, ie. you can’t install new chips in a machine as easily as you can install new disk space, so if you anticipate a growing user base, allocating a fixed CPU to each user is impractical. In such cases, you must allocate a percentage to each user. For example, many web hosting companies throttle CPU usage on your website once it crosses a certain percentage of the total available computing power.

Above all, webmasters and administrators need to be aware of resource allocation issues and problems and address them in a timely and logical manner.