Optimising the cloud infrastructure: tool design and a case study Online publication date: Wed, 02-Jul-2014
by Chris Nero; Anindya Neogi; Venkata Ramesh Somisetty
International Journal of Cloud Computing (IJCC), Vol. 3, No. 2, 2014
Abstract: It has been predicted in a cloud management survey, that over 68% of production workloads in the USA will be virtualised by 2013, which is almost 25% more than in 2010 (IDC Private Cloud Management Study). However, virtualisation will not deliver its full potential unless it is carefully managed to achieve the adequate consolidation density within acceptable performance risk. In this paper, we describe an interactive, what-if analysis driven, planning tool to manage and optimise virtualised/cloud environments. The analysis is performed based on usage data, discovered configuration, policies and other meta-data. The recommended optimisation plan may suggest possible savings based on various cost factors. The paper also describes a case study of how we have applied the tool in an IBM internal cloud and present some insights and learning. Based on several what-if analysis scenarios we demonstrated, 100+ more virtual machines can be accommodated in the existing cloud, resulting in improved ROI.
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