Alireza Amiri Undergraduate Dissertation 2014/15

Analysis of an Cloud Migration Case Study and Energy-aware Cloud Data Centre

Supervised by M.Stannett

Abstract

Organisations usually adopt new innovations and technologies that promote their services or products in various ways. One of recent game changers is cloud computing which has been adopted by various organisations mainly because of benefits associated with reduced IT costs and in some cases the some benefits are hyped. This might be due to unrealistic expectations or the excessive advertising from the cloud providers. Cloud computing brings along various new alternatives for organisations that have usually invested quite heavily on their IT in terms of on-premises data centres, a traditional model which is usually managed internally and is very expensive from a cost and energy-aware view. Cloud computing providers offer more flexible models where organisations can rent or buy subscription based resources depending on their usage which often goes under the term ‘pay-as-you-go’ whilst usually having their resources managed on different levels by the same provider. Various hybrid solutions have also been applied in traditional data centres, where organisations use their own solutions and cloud provider solutions for their benefits. As a result, cloud computing data centres have become very popular and the growing demand for computing capacity has increased the cost of building and operating data centres, although cutting down the high costs related to operating data centres and reducing energy consumption are yet challenges to be tackled. This project will perform a case study and setup a simulation scenario in a cloud based environment and examine cloud computing data centres from an energy-aware perspective. By analysing various energy-aware methods for optimal performance to be used in cloud data centres, we will investigate and discuss the various aspects for optimal usage of cloud data centres in comparison with traditional ones. Furthermore the project aims to provide the data and results from this project for organisations and institutions, by clarifying what the cloud has to offer and assist in identifying alternatives for reducing the energy consumption of various data centres types.