Component-based middleware, such as the Lightweight CORBA Component
Model, are increasingly used to implement large-scale distributed
real-time and embedded (DRE) systems. In addition to supporting the quality of
service (QoS) requirements of individual DRE systems, component
technologies must also support bounded latencies when effecting
deployment changes to DRE systems in response to changing
environmental conditions and operational requirements.

This paper makes three contributions to the study of predictable
deployment latencies in DRE systems. First, we describe OMG's Deployment and Configuration (D\&C)
specification for component-based systems and discuss how conventional
implementations of this standard can significantly degrade deployment
latencies. Second, we describe architectural changes and performance
optimizations implemented within the Locality-Enhanced Deployment and
Configuration Engine (LE-DAnCE) implementation of the D\&C
specification. Finally, we analyze the performance of LE-DAnCE in the
context of component deployments on 10 nodes for a representative DRE system
consisting of 1,000 components. Our results show LE-DAnCE's optimizations
provide a bounded deployment latency of less than 2 seconds with 4 percent
jitter.