ARTFEED — Contemporary Art Intelligence

ScaleSense: Cost-Intelligent Scaling in Alibaba AnalyticDB

ai-technology · 2026-08-11

A new research paper introduces ScaleSense, a proactive query-level resource scaling framework designed to address the costly 'provisioning trap' in cloud-native serverless data warehouses. The framework, developed for Alibaba AnalyticDB, uses a multi-faceted query encoder that models plan topologies and hardware specifications, and a quantile-based resource predictor to estimate multi-dimensional physical footprints. An auto-scaling controller then navigates resource allocation to avoid over-provisioning and alleviate non-CPU bottlenecks like I/O saturation. The paper, available on arXiv (2608.07945), analyzes production workloads and proposes a solution to optimize resource allocation for heterogeneous ad-hoc queries, potentially saving significant monetary budgets. The work is authored by researchers from Alibaba, and the paper was announced as a cross-type submission.

Key facts

  • ScaleSense is a proactive, query-level resource scaling framework.
  • It is designed for Alibaba AnalyticDB, a cloud-native serverless data warehouse.
  • The framework addresses the 'provisioning trap' where users over-provision resources due to fear of resource depletion.
  • Over-provisioning wastes monetary budgets and does not alleviate non-CPU bottlenecks like I/O saturation.
  • ScaleSense features a multi-faceted query encoder that models plan topologies and hardware specifications.
  • A quantile-based resource predictor estimates multi-dimensional physical footprints.
  • An auto-scaling controller navigates resource scaling decisions.
  • The paper is available on arXiv with ID 2608.07945.
  • The research is based on analysis of production workloads in Alibaba AnalyticDB.

Entities

Institutions

  • Alibaba
  • arXiv

Sources