A Modeling Strategy for Cloud Infrastructure Planning Considering Performance and Cost Requirements

Cloud computing is a model that allows resources to be offered as services over the Internet. Due to dynamic and virtualized nature of cloud environments and diversity of client requests, providing the expected service quality while avoiding over-provisioning is not a simple task. To ensure that the provisioned service is acceptable, providers must exploit techniques and mechanisms that guarantee a minimum level of service quality. The performance evaluation of cloud infrastructures has been receiving considerable attention by providers as a prominent activity for improving service quality. This paper presents a methodology, representation models and an optimization model for cloud infrastructures planning. The proposed methodology and models aim to provide support for the planning and selection of cloud infrastructures according to performance and cost requirements. The optimization model generates cloud infrastructures with different hardware and software configurations and these infrastructures are represented using SPN and cost models. Using the proposed technique, performance metrics allows the selection of cloud infrastructures that meet the client requirements. A case study based on Eucalyptus platform is adopted to demonstrate the feasibility of the methodology and models.