Introducing Weighted Nodes to Evaluate the Cloud Computing Topology

Abstract

Typical data centers house several powerful ICT (Information and Communication Technology) equipment such as servers, storage devices and network equipment that are high-energy consuming. The nature of these high-energy consuming equipment is mostly accountable for the very large quantities of emissions which are harmful and unfriendly to the environment. The costs associated with energy consumption in data centers increases as the need for more computational resources increases, so also the appalling effect of CO 2 (Carbon IV Oxide) emissions on the environment from the constituent ICT facilities-Servers, Cooling systems, Telecommunication systems, Printers, Local Area Network etc. Energy related costs would traditionally account for about 42% (forty-two per cent) of the total costs of running a typical data center. There is a need to have a good balance between optimization of energy budgets in any data center and fulfillment of the Service Level Agreements (SLAs), as this ensures continuity/profitability of business and customer’s satisfaction. A greener computing from what used to be would not only save/sustain the environment but would also optimize energy and by implication saves costs. This paper addresses the challenges of sustainable (or green computing) in the cloud and proffer appropriate, plausible and possible solutions. The idle and uptime of a node and the traffic on its links (edges) has been a concern for the cloud operators because as the strength and weights of the links to the nodes (data centres) increases more energy are also being consumed by and large. It is hereby proposed that the knowledge of centrality can achieve the aim of energy sustainability and efficiency therefore enabling efficient allocation of energy resources to the right path. Mixed-Mean centrality as a new measure of the importance of a node in a graph is introduced, based on the generalized degree centrality. The mixed-mean centrality reflects not only the strengths (weights) and numbers of edges for degree centrality but it combines these features by also applying the closeness centrality measures while it goes further to include the weights of the nodes in the consideration for centrality measures. We illustrate the benefits of this new measure by applying it to cloud computing, which is typically a complex system. Network structure analysis is important in characterizing such complex systems.