There are several techniques for generating a workload consisting of a series of operations presented to a target device. Each has advantages and drawbacks when evaluated in terms of accuracy with respect to the real workload being modeled and computational or storage resources required to generate it. For workloads corresponding to "stateful" protocols, some techniques cannot be applied, as they fail to capture important ordering relationships between operations or fail to avoid generating an illegal sequence of operations as dictated by the protocol. This paper describes a new workload modeling and generation technique using Hidden Markov Models. The technique provides an accurate model of a workload while minimizing the resources required during simulated workload generation as well as conforming to stateful protocol sequencing restrictions. The application of the technique as applied to modeling CIFS network filesystem protocol workloads is presented, along with preliminary experimental results validating its effectiveness.
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