DOI: 10.5176/978-981-08-5837-7_200
Authors: Kate Craig-Wood, Prof. Paul Krause, Nick Craig-Wood
Abstract:
Cloud computing is widely associated with major capital investment in mega data centres, housing expensive blade servers and storage area networks. In this paper we argue that a modular approach to building local or regional data centres using commodity hardware and open source software can produce a cost effective solution that better addresses the goals of cloud computing, and provides a scalable architecture that meets the service requirements of a high quality data centre. In support of this goal, we provide data that supports three research hypotheses:
1. that central processor unit (CPU) resources are not normally limiting;
2. that disk I/O transactions (TPS) are more often limiting, but this can be mitigated by maximizing the TPS-CPU ratio;
3. that customer CPU loads are generally static and small. Our results indicate that the modular, commodity hardware based architecture is near optimal. This is a very significant result, as it opens the door to alternative business models for the provision of data centres that significantly reduce the need for major up-front capital investment.
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