Patent ID: 7398191

Claim:
A method for computing a distance metric between computer system workloads, comprising: receiving a dataset containing metrics that have been collected for a number of workloads of interest, wherein the metrics were stored to a file during the collection process; using spines to define bases for a regression model which uses a performance indicator y as a response and uses the metrics (represented by a vector x) as predictors; fitting the regression model to the dataset using a penalized least squares (PLS) criterion to obtain functions f 1 , . . . , f P , which are smooth univariate functions of individual metrics that add up to the regression function f, such that y = f ⁡ ( x ) + ɛ = ∑ i = 1 P ⁢ f i ⁡ ( x i ) + ɛ , wherein ε represents noise; and using the fitted regression function to define the distance metric; using the distance metric to analyze similarities between workloads; and displaying results of the analysis to a user.