Review of Cloud Data Centers
Kilaru Satyasai, Manish Kumar Sharma
Lovely Professional University, Jalandhar, Punjab
satyasaikilaru.1419n@gmail.com, manishkumarsharma74@gmail.com
Abstract:
Cloud data centers are gaining increased
traction in today's business world,
allowing businesses and individuals to
store and access data online. Cloud data
centers are essentially large facilities that
are designed to house and manage large
amounts of data, making them easily
accessible to users over the Internet. This
term paper will explore the benefits and
challenges of cloud data centers, as well
as their impact on the future of data
management. One of the most significant
advantages of cloud data centers is their
scalability, which allows businesses to
scale their infrastructure up or down as
needed without incurring additional
hardware costs. Additionally, cloud
providers often offer pay-as-you-go
pricing models, allowing businesses to
save money on infrastructure costs.
Additionally, cloud data centers offer
greater accessibility to data, making it
easy for users to access data from
anywhere with an internet connection.
1. Introduction:
Cloud Data Centers (CDCs) are increasingly
being deployed by IT service providers such as
Google, Amazon, and Microsoft to meet the
digital demands of the world. CDCs provide an
efficient infrastructure for storing large
amounts of data as well as enormous
processing power. CDCs operate 24/7 with
thousands of servers, storage devices, and
network equipment to ensure 99.99%
availability of cloud services. Digital activities
Finally, cloud data centers provide
greater data redundancy, with multiple
copies of data stored across distinct
locations. Cloud data centers are known
for their advanced security measures,
making them more secure than on-
premises data centers. However,
businesses must consider several
challenges when using cloud data centers,
such as connectivity, data privacy, vendor
lock-in, compliance, and uptime.
Connectivity is essential for access to
cloud data centers, while data privacy is
important for businesses to evaluate.
Vendor lock-in can be difficult and costly,
and compliance is important for
businesses to avoid compliance issues.
Uptime is essential for businesses to
ensure uptime, security, and
performance, and any issues with the
provider's infrastructure can cause
downtime. Cloud data centers are likely to
play an increasingly vital role in the
future of data management.
such as social media, search, file sharing, and
streaming generate large amounts of data,
which increases energy costs and leaves an
environmental impact in the form of
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Despite
improvements in the efficiency of computing
equipment, electricity consumption in data
centers is expected to increase by 15-20%
annually and is responsible for GHG emissions
from electricity generation, and computer
equipment manufacturing. Data centers
emitted 7,874,444 million metric tons of CO2
in 2011, requiring innovative and disruptive
measures to improve energy and carbon
[5] Figure 1
CDC's complete reliance on fossil fuel-
based grid power has resulted in low CUE
values. A sustainable and green CDC
requires the application of several
technologies to reduce energy costs and
GHG emissions. The main elements of a
sustainable CDC are technologies for
generating renewable energy, waste heat
recovery, and free cooling technology. The
Mobile Modular Data Center (MDC) design
facilitates the use of renewable energy,
waste heat, and free cooling opportunities
in geographically dispersed locations.
Virtualization-based workload migration
supports workload and resource
management across geographically
distributed CDC nodes. Renewable energy
generation and free cooling technologies
require ideal climatic conditions, while the
use of waste heat requires CDCs to be co-
located with sites suitable for waste heat
efficiency. Energy Use Efficiency (PUE) and
Carbon Use Efficiency (CUE) are sustainability
metrics used by CDC.
recovery opportunities. The MDC design is
based on shipping containers, allowing
CDC nodes to be moved to locations where
durable computing sessions abound. The
opportunistic relocation of CDC nodes is
based on two factors: on-site availability of
renewable energy and proximity to free
cooling resources and opportunities for
waste heat recovery. Durable CDC is
supported by the geographically
distributed MDC design and virtualization-
based workload migration technology. IT
service providers, such as Google and
Facebook, are also emphasizing the
migration of grid power to renewables in
geographically distributed configurations.
This article is the first CDC sustainability
survey that covers all major elements of
sustainability and the green economy in
the cloud. It catalogs cutting-edge
technologies and technologies that
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support sustainable CDCs, describes case
studies from the computing industry and
research community advocating the
demand for CDC sustainability measures,
surveys existing research on sustainable
CDCs, and highlights challenges in
adopting technologies and technologies
green and sustainable energy in
geographically dispersed CDCs. Section 3
presents case studies from leading IT
companies and the research community that
demonstrate the benefits of integrating
renewables, waste heat recovery,
geographically distributed MDC design, and
VM migration techniques in CDCs. Section 4
examines renewable energy adoption in CDCs,
Section 5 examines the possibilities for using
waste heat, Section 6 details the MDC
architecture and corresponding server,
network, and cooling design, and Section 7
reviews WAN VM migration techniques in the
context of geographically distributed CDCs.
Section 8 discusses future directions of
research and open challenges in the field of
sustainable CDCs.
1.2. Overview of CDC
In this section, we provide the basics of
sustainable and green CDCs.
1.2.1. Renewable Energy in CDC
Sustainable and green computing requires
the application of energy efficiency and
renewable energy measures to reduce
energy and carbon footprint. Brown
energy from fossil fuels such as coal,
natural gas, and oil 4044 results in
significant CO2 emissions. On the other
hand, green energy generated from
renewable resources such as water, wind,
and solar 4044 results in almost no CO2
emissions. Hydroelectricity, although
classified as a green energy source, is only
available through the power grid provided
by public companies. Conversely, solar
and wind power can be generated by
installing onsite or purchasing from an
offsite company. The capital cost and
unpredictability of renewable energy
sources are barriers to their widespread
adoption. However, it is estimated that the
cost/watt of renewable energy will halve
over the next decade. The renewable
energy/watt cost reductions are based on
(a) advances in material capacity, such as
photovoltaic panels, (b) increases in
rechargeable battery storage capacity, and
(c) government financial incentives for
organizations to integrate renewable
energy [twenty-three]. The problem of
unpredictability in renewable energy
supply can be addressed by electrical load
balancing and workload migration
techniques among geographically
distributed CDCs. Additionally, a hybrid
network design that draws power from
stable network resources and on-premises
variable renewable energy is essential to
ensure 100% availability of cloud services.
However, abundant renewable energy is
often located far from commercial CDC
sites. Therefore, CDC nodes should be
positioned near renewable energy sources
using a mobile design of MDC. The
integration of renewables into the CDC has
led to a drop in the CUE indicator. Higher
investment costs and disruption of
renewables. Elements of a sustainable
cloud data center model.
1.2.2. Use of waste heat in CDC
Fossil fuel reserves are rapidly
diminishing and require the reuse of waste
heat in all types of energy conversion
systems. Most of the electrical power
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supplied to CDC servers is converted to
thermal energy, leading to increased
cooling costs. To reduce cooling costs, the
CDC must be moved to locations with free
cooling resources. Waste heat can be
utilized in vapor absorption-based CDC
cooling systems to achieve the ideal PUE
value. MDC programmable nodes are well
suited to take advantage of waste heat
recovery opportunities in geographically
distributed sites. The main challenges in
utilizing the waste heat are the low
thermal mass of the CDC and the high
investment cost for the heat exchange
interface.
1.2.3. CDC Modular Designs
CDCs need to make smart use of the
renewable energy and waste heat
opportunities that exist at locations that
are often far from CDC's commercial
buildings. Modular Data Centers (MDCs)
enable localization as a measure of energy
efficiency, as they are built-in shipping
containers and can be transported to
remote locations. The container-based
MDC design provides two desirable
properties for a durable CDC. Free cooling
and waste heat utilization measures. The
enclosure is designed to effectively
perform hot runner containment to
capture advanced waste heat from the
servers. The inclusion of hot runners also
increases the cooling efficiency thereby
reducing operating costs. In the Universal
MDC design, the IT and cooling equipment
is placed in a container before being
transported to a remote site. MDC nodes
provide flexibility to cloud service
providers through a serverless design, as
computing resources are provisioned
before deployment and are not restored or
upgraded in the event of an outage. MDC
nodes remain in service until the
assembled components provide at least-
level compute outputs. MDC nodes can
operate as constantly moving entities
seeking opportunistic durability options,
or static entities operating from locations
with redundant CDC durability options.
1.2.4 VM Migration
Virtualization technology provides resource
management, consolidation, and migration to
improve energy efficiency and fault tolerance.
It also supports workload migration between
distributed MDC nodes, but the cost of
network latency and power consumption is
the biggest challenge.
2. Case Studies
The relationship between sustainable CDC
technologies and technologies is
established and supplemented by several
case studies conducted by the computer
industry and published in scientific
articles. In this section, we present a case
study that reports a significantly efficient
PUE value, while the uses several
sustainability measures such as renewable
energy, MDC design, and waste heat
recovery. Table 1 summarizes the
sustainable CDC case studies discussed in
this section.
2.1 Parasol
Parasol is a green CDC prototype based on
four key technologies and techniques:
MDC design, on-site renewable energy
generated by solar panels, free cooling,
and net billing. A year-long case study was
conducted using an MDC powered by on-
site solar panels on the roof of the Building
in New Jersey. The Parasol design reduces
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the total cost of grid electricity by 75% and
can amortize the capital cost of a solar
installation without batteries over 4.8 to
7.1 years with a 60% government
incentive. The efficiency of photovoltaic
technology (multi-crystalline silicon) will
increase from 15% to 25% by 2030, and
the estimated space required for solar
panels to power the CDC is 47 times
greater than the estimated current space
and capacity values. The cost of installing
solar power will drop by 50% by 2030,
suggesting that the cost and space
requirements for sustainable CDCs will
drop significantly over the next decade.
2.2 Free Lunch
The Free Lunch is an MDC architecture that is
experimentally evaluated through the
feasibility of durable CDC elements. It is based
on three principles of sustainability:
geographically distributed remote CDCs using
on-site renewable energy, dedicated high-
speed network connections between two CDC
nodes, and a migration VM-based workload.
The authors selected two locations (near the
Red Sea and southwestern Australia) that
were ideal for harvesting solar energy at
different times and climatic zones. The
electricity generated from renewable sources
was found to be 615 times less than the
average annual demand (150 watts per
server). Migrating workloads between CDC
nodes during renewable energy outages
prevents a worst-case scenario of 677
milliseconds of downtime while considering a
10 Gbps wide area network spanning 10,000
miles. The results show that they can run CDCs
using only renewable energy resources in a
geographically distributed configuration
while migrating workloads to a dedicated
high-speed network.
2.3. Aquasar
The supercomputer is made up of 42 blade
servers, two of which are cooled with hot
water and the third is air-cooled. Hot water
circulates in microchannels connected to the
electronic chip, taking energy from the system
and returning cooling waters to the
supercomputer.
2.4 Free-Cooling MDC
Researchers conducted a case study to
quantitatively compare the cooling
efficiency of the MDC and solid CDC
designs. The purpose of this study was to
investigate CDC temperature profiles,
characterize power efficiency, and
investigate the effect of virtualization and
consolidation on cooling power in single
and multiple interconnected MDC
configurations. The MDC design minimizes
air recirculation between racks through
hot aisle containment, allowing the
maximum intake air temperature to
increase to 32 C. On the other hand, the
CDC's traditional solid design does not
provide an effective air seal. Therefore, the
intake air temperature must be lowered
and at the same time, more power is
consumed in the cooling system. The case
study found that consolidating the
workload onto the fewest number of MDC
containers resulted in being 81% and 44
% more efficient than elevated slab-and-
mortar data centers in terms of cooling
and power consumption, respectively. An
average CPUE of 1. 35% was observed for
single and multiple MDC designs.
Waste Heat Utilization in CDC
Waste heat utilization or energy reuse is
an innovative direction of the Sustainable
CDC. It requires measures to capture the
heat dissipated by electronic components
5
and use it for useful work. The heat
exchange mechanism between the CDC
and the heat recovery entity can be air-to-
air, air-to-liquid, liquid-to-air, or liquid-to-
liquid.
4. VM Migration Virtualization
Virtualization technology helps the CDC
provide a multi-tenant, pay-as-you-go
business model by migrating workloads
between geographically distributed nodes
and consolidating applications and
workloads onto fewer physical resources.
It also provides resource flexibility and
prevents SLA violations and has been
5. Conclusion
[6] Figure 2
and green CDC. It explores technologies
such as Onsite Renewable Energy
Generation, Waste Heat Utilization,
Geographically Distributed Modular CDC,
increasingly adopted to reduce power
consumption. The average resource
utilization of physical resources CDC
remains around 30%. Virtualization
enables resource consolidation through
the migration of virtual machines, which
can be divided into migration modes. The
objective function of Renewable Energy
Technologies is to minimize grid energy,
sink-sink, or operating expenses. The
network model of choice is LAN, WAN, or
hybrid, and KVM, Xen, and VMware are the
virtualization technologies of choice for
the CDC Renewable and Sustainable
Energy Study
This article advocates innovative and
disruptive technologies for a sustainable
and VM Migration. The 4044 case studies
reviewed in the study showed that
sustainability measures can reduce energy
costs and CDC's carbon footprint.
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However, a sustainable geographically
distributed CDC generally compromises
the proximity of users and the availability Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies
of manpower. Researchers should should be implemented to study the
optimize VM long-distance migration for sustainability and environmental impact
WAN technology for sustainable operation of CDCs at different stages of the life cycle.
among geographically distributed CDCs.
References:
1. S. R. Choudhary, et al. "A review of
cloud computing: concepts,
architecture, and challenges"
Journal of Global Research in
Computer Science, vol. 3, 2012.
2. "Cloud Data Centers: A
Comparative Study of Cost and
Energy Efficiency" by M. El Houda
Boukerche (2019).
3. "Cloud Data Center Network
Topologies: A Survey" by B. M.
Moni and A. M. A. Hafiz (2020).
4. "Challenges in Data Center
Networking" by A. Greenberg
(2008).
5. https://www.researchgate.net/fig
ure/Elements-of-Sustainable-
Cloud-Data-Center-
Model_fig1_301339069
6. https://www.researchgate.net/fig
ure/Sustainable-CDC-based-
workload-
migrations_fig8_301339069