SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR DETERMINING AN AMOUNT OF VIRTUAL MACHINES FOR USE WITH EXTRACT, TRANSFORM, LOAD (ETL) PROCESSES

In accordance with an embodiment, described herein are systems and methods for determining or allocating an amount, quantity, or number of compute instances or virtual machines for use with extract, transform, load (ETL) processes. In an example embodiment, a particular (e.g., optimal) number of virtual machines (VM's) can be determined by predicting ETL completion times for customers, using historical data. ETL processes can be simulated with an initial/particular number of virtual machines. If the predicted duration is greater than the desired duration, the number of virtual machines can be incremented, and the simulation repeated. Actual completion times from ETL processes can be fed back, to update a determined number of compute instances or virtual machines. In accordance with an embodiment, the system can be used, for example, to generate alerts associated with customer service level agreements (SLA's).