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The cost of a cloud: research problems in data center networks

Published: 31 December 2008 Publication History

Abstract

The data centers used to create cloud services represent a significant investment in capital outlay and ongoing costs. Accordingly, we first examine the costs of cloud service data centers today. The cost breakdown reveals the importance of optimizing work completed per dollar invested. Unfortunately, the resources inside the data centers often operate at low utilization due to resource stranding and fragmentation. To attack this first problem, we propose (1) increasing network agility, and (2) providing appropriate incentives to shape resource consumption. Second, we note that cloud service providers are building out geo-distributed networks of data centers. Geo-diversity lowers latency to users and increases reliability in the presence of an outage taking out an entire site. However, without appropriate design and management, these geo-diverse data center networks can raise the cost of providing service. Moreover, leveraging geo-diversity requires services be designed to benefit from it. To attack this problem, we propose (1) joint optimization of network and data center resources, and (2) new systems and mechanisms for geo-distributing state.

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    Published In

    cover image ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review
    ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review  Volume 39, Issue 1
    January 2009
    74 pages
    ISSN:0146-4833
    DOI:10.1145/1496091
    Issue’s Table of Contents

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    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 31 December 2008
    Published in SIGCOMM-CCR Volume 39, Issue 1

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    Author Tags

    1. cloud-service data centers
    2. costs
    3. network challenges

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