Should infrastructure clouds be priced entirely on performance? An EC2 case study
by John O'Loughlin; Lee Gillam
International Journal of Big Data Intelligence (IJBDI), Vol. 1, No. 4, 2014

Abstract: The increasing number of public clouds, the large and varied range of VMs they offer, and the provider specific terminology used for describing performance characteristics, makes price/performance comparisons difficult. Large performance variation of identically priced instances can lead to clouds being described as 'unreliable' and 'unpredictable'. In this paper, we suggest that instances might be considered mispriced with respect to their deliverable performance - even when provider supplied performance ratings are taken into account. We demonstrate how CPU model determines instance performance, show associations between instance classes and sets of CPU models, and determine class-to-model performance characteristics. We show that pricing based on CPU models may significantly reduce, but not eliminate, price/performance variation. We further show that CPU model distribution differs across different AZs and so it may be possible to obtain better price/performance in some AZs by determining proportions of models found per AZ. However, the resources obtained in an AZ are account dependent, displays random variation and is subject to abrupt change.

Online publication date: Sat, 24-Jan-2015

The full text of this article is only available to individual subscribers or to users at subscribing institutions.

 
Existing subscribers:
Go to Inderscience Online Journals to access the Full Text of this article.

Pay per view:
If you are not a subscriber and you just want to read the full contents of this article, buy online access here.

Complimentary Subscribers, Editors or Members of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Big Data Intelligence (IJBDI):
Login with your Inderscience username and password:

Username:        Password:          Forgotten your password?

Want to subscribe?
A subscription gives you complete access to all articles in the current issue, as well as to all articles in the previous three years (where applicable). See our Orders page to subscribe.

If you still need assistance, please email subs@inderscience.com