Right-Sizing Geo-distributed Data Centers for Availability and Latency
Iyswarya Narayanan, Aman Kansal, Anand Sivasubramaniam · 2017
We show cloud developers how to right size data center (DC) capacity for geo-distributed applications deployed on several multi-megawatt DCs, possibly also using many smaller edge DCs. Note that capacity considerations for a geo-distributed infrastructure do not decompose into individual DC capacity planning. When edge DCs are used, heterogeneous availability and costs affect the capacity split between the edge and core DCs. Non-uniform spatial distribution of clients and interdependence between latency and availability constraints make it non-trivial to provision the right capacity at each DC. We develop a geo-distributed capacity planning framework to capture the key factors that influence capacity, ranging from application demand patterns, latency and availability requirements, DC cost-availability trade-offs, and data replication overheads. We apply our framework to a realistic application and DC infrastructure setting to gather insights into how capacity should be provisioned and allocated across DCs for a representative set of requirements and costs.