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Consolidated cluster systems for data centers in the cloud age: a survey and analysis

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Abstract

In the cloud age, heterogeneous application modes on large-scale infrastructures bring about the challenges on resource utilization and manageability to data centers. Many resource and runtime management systems are developed or evolved to address these challenges and relevant problems from different perspectives. This paper tries to identify the main motivations, key concerns, common features, and representative solutions of such systems through a survey and analysis. A typical kind of these systems is generalized as the consolidated cluster system, whose design goal is identified as reducing the overall costs under the quality of service premise. A survey on this kind of systems is given, and the critical issues concerned by such systems are summarized as resource consolidation and runtime coordination. These two issues are analyzed and classified according to the design styles and external characteristics abstracted from the surveyed work. Five representative consolidated cluster systems from both academia and industry are illustrated and compared in detail based on the analysis and classifications. We hope this survey and analysis to be conducive to both design implementation and technology selection of this kind of systems, in response to the constantly emerging challenges on infrastructure and application management in data centers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China

    Jian Lin, Li Zha & Zhiwei Xu

  2. Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Jian Lin

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  1. Jian Lin
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  2. Li Zha
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Correspondence to Jian Lin.

Additional information

Jian Lin is a PhD candidate in computer architecture at Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His current research interests include distributed software architecture, large-scale resource management, and security technologies in grid and cloud computing systems.

Li Zha obtained his PhD in 2003, and is an associate professor of Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He has been the project leader of several national level research programs. His research is focused on large-scale distributed resource management, data storage/processing/retrieval and system level optimization. His interests also include other classic issues in distributed computing and grid computing field.

Zhiwei Xu received the PhD from University of Southern California in 1987. He is currently a professor of Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research interests include network computing, distributed operating systems, and high-performance computer architecture. His editorial board services include the IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, Journal of Grid Computing, Journal of Computer Science and Technology, and Journal of Computer Research and Development. He is a senior member of the IEEE.

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Lin, J., Zha, L. & Xu, Z. Consolidated cluster systems for data centers in the cloud age: a survey and analysis. Front. Comput. Sci. 7, 1–19 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11704-012-2086-y

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