Hi,

Thanks for sharing. I wonder if alternative options shouldn't be considered also ?

1) Load-balancing Workspace Server, available out of the box with any IT Client/Server offer (BI Server, Office Analytics)

2) SAS High Performance Analytics with hadoop cluster

3) even scalability at OS level with latest Intel Xeon chips and affinity tuning : cgroups with Linux servers running on Intel Xeon latest models (up to 15 cores on each socket!) might perhaps be adequate sometimes - but restricted in terms of horizontal scaling (new users)

Automating the Workload "IT orchestration process" (or whatever it's called) with a Grid manager or Round-Robin algorithm won't eliminate the basics of need assessment. Mapping users groups on a kind on QoS scaling : for instance, putting up high performance resource for hardcore users , medium sized power for regular users and remaining power for less frequent users on the 3-level scale. Resource contention issues causing disatisfied users might often occur when different classes of users are put together.