Allocating Compute and Network Resources Under Management Objectives in Large-Scale Clouds

We consider the problem of jointly allocating compute and network resources in a large Infrastructure-as-a-service cloud. We formulate the problem of optimally allocating resources to virtual data centers (VDCs) for four well-known management objectives: balanced load, energy efficiency, fair allocation, and service differentiation. Then, we outline an architecture for resource allocation, which centers around a set of cooperating controllers, each solving a problem related to the chosen management objective. We illustrate how a global management objective is mapped onto objectives that govern the execution of these controllers. For a key controller, the Dynamic Placement Controller, we give a detailed distributed design, which is based on a gossip protocol that can switch between management objectives. The design is applicable to a broad class of management objectives, which we characterize through a property of the objective function. The property ensures the applicability of an iterative descent method that the gossip protocol implements. We evaluate, through simulation, the dynamic placement of VDCs for a large cloud under changing load and VDC churn. Simulation results show that this controller is effective and highly scalable, up to 100’000 nodes, for the management objectives considered.