A survey and taxonomy on energy efficient resource allocation techniques for cloud computing systems

In a cloud computing paradigm, energy efficient allocation of different virtualized ICT resources (servers, storage disks, and networks, and the like) is a complex problem due to the presence of heterogeneous application (e.g., content delivery networks, MapReduce, web applications, and the like) workloads having contentious allocation requirements in terms of ICT resource capacities (e.g., network bandwidth, processing speed, response time, etc.). Several recent papers have tried to address the issue of improving energy efficiency in allocating cloud resources to applications with varying degree of success. However, to the best of our knowledge there is no published literature on this subject that clearly articulates the research problem and provides research taxonomy for succinct classification of existing techniques. Hence, the main aim of this paper is to identify open challenges associated with energy efficient resource allocation. In this regard, the study, first, outlines the problem and existing hardware and software-based techniques available for this purpose. Furthermore, available techniques already presented in the literature are summarized based on the energy-efficient research dimension taxonomy. The advantages and disadvantages of the existing techniques are comprehensively analyzed against the proposed research dimension taxonomy namely: resource adaption policy, objective function, allocation method, allocation operation, and interoperability.     

COACT: a query interface language for collaborative databases

Data curation activities in collaborative databases mandate that collaborators interact until they converge and agree on the content of their data. In a previous work, we presented a cloud-based collaborative database system that promotes and enables collaboration and data curation scenarios. Our system classifies different versions of a data item to either pending, approved, or rejected. The approval or rejection of a certain version is done by the database Principle Investigators (or PIs) based on its value. Our system also allows collaborators to view the status of each version and help PIs take decisions by providing feedback based on their experiments and/or opinions. Most importantly, our system provided mechanisms for history tracking of different versions to trace the modifications and approval/rejection done by both collaborators and PIs on different versions of a data item. We labeled our system as Update-Pending-Approval model (or UPA). In this paper, we describe a high level SQL query interface language for PIs and collaborators to interact with the UPA framework. We define a set of UPA keywords that are used as a part of the history tracking mechanism to select specific versions of a data item, and a set of UPA options that select specific versions based on possible future decisions of PIs. We implemented our query interface mechanism on top of Apache Phoenix, taking into consideration that the UPA system was implemented on top of Apache HBase. We test the performance of the UPA query language by executing several queries that contain different complexity levels and discuss their results.     

Tree-based special-purpose Array architectures for neural computing

A massively parallel architecture called the mesh-of-appendixed-trees (MAT) is shown to be suitable for processing artificial neural networks (ANNs). Both the recall and the learning phases of the multilayer feedforward with backpropagation ANN model are considered. The MAT structure is refined to produce two special-purpose array processors; FMAT1 and FMAT2, for efficient ANN computation. This refinement tends to reduce circuit area and increase hardware utilization. FMAT1 is a simple structure suitable for the recall phase. FMAT2 requires little extra hardware but supports learning as well. A major characteristic of the proposed neurocomputers is high performance. It takesO (logN) time to process a neural network withN neurons in its largest layer. Our proposed architecture is shown to provide the best number of connections per unit time when compared to several major techniques in the literature. Another important feature of our approach is its ability to pipeline more than one input pattern which further improves the performance.The authors acknowledge the support of the NSF and State of Louisiana grant NSF/LEQSF (1992–96)-ADP-04.     

Performance analysis of data intensive cloud systems based on data management and replication: a survey

As we delve deeper into the ‘Digital Age’, we witness an explosive growth in the volume, velocity, and variety of the data available on the Internet. For example, in 2012 about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data was created on a daily basis that originated from myriad of sources and applications including mobile devices, sensors, individual archives, social networks, Internet of Things, enterprises, cameras, software logs, etc. Such ‘Data Explosions’ has led to one of the most challenging research issues of the current Information and Communication Technology era: how to optimally manage (e.g., store, replicated, filter, and the like) such large amount of data and identify new ways to analyze large amounts of data for unlocking information. It is clear that such large data streams cannot be managed by setting up on-premises enterprise database systems as it leads to a large up-front cost in buying and administering the hardware and software systems. Therefore, next generation data management systems must be deployed on cloud. The cloud computing paradigm provides scalable and elastic resources, such as data and services accessible over the Internet Every Cloud Service Provider must assure that data is efficiently processed and distributed in a way that does not compromise end-users’ Quality of Service (QoS) in terms of data availability, data search delay, data analysis delay, and the like. In the aforementioned perspective, data replication is used in the cloud for improving the performance (e.g., read and write delay) of applications that access data. Through replication a data intensive application or system can achieve high availability, better fault tolerance, and data recovery. In this paper, we survey data management and replication approaches (from 2007 to 2011) that are developed by both industrial and research communities. The focus of the survey is to discuss and characterize the existing approaches of data replication and management that tackle the resource usage and QoS provisioning with different levels of efficiencies. Moreover, the breakdown of both influential expressions (data replication and management) to provide different QoS attributes is deliberated. Furthermore, the performance advantages and disadvantages of data replication and management approaches in the cloud computing environments are analyzed. Open issues and future challenges related to data consistency, scalability, load balancing, processing and placement are also reported.     

AUDIT: approving and tracking updates with dependencies in collaborative databases

Collaborative databases such as genome databases, often involve extensive curation activities where collaborators need to interact to be able to converge and agree on the content of data. In a typical scenario, a member of the collaboration makes some updates and these become visible to all collaborators for possible comments and modifications. At the same time, these updates are usually pending the approval or rejection from the data custodian based on the related discussion and the content of the data. Unfortunately, the approval and authorization of updates in current databases is based solely on the identity of the user, e.g., via the SQL GRANT and REVOKE commands. In this paper, we present a scalable cloud-based collaborative database system to support collaboration and data curation scenarios. Our system is based on an Update Pending Approval model. In a nutshell, when a collaborator updates a given data item, it is marked as pending approval until the data custodian approves or rejects the update. Until then, any other collaborator can view and comment on the data, pending its approval. We fully realized our system inside HBase, a cloud-based platform. We also conducted extensive experiments showing that the system scales well under different workloads.     

Combinatorial optimization of distributed queries

In relational distributed databases a query cost consists of a local cost and a transmission cost. Query optimization is a combinatorial optimization problem. As the query size grows, the optimization methods based on exhaustive search become too expensive. We propose the following strategy for solving large distributed query optimization problems in relational database systems: (1) represent each query-processing schedule by a labeled directed graph; (2) reduce the number of different schedules by pruning away invalid or high-cost solutions; and (3) find a suboptimal schedule by combinatorial optimization. We investigate several combinatorial optimization techniques: random search, single start, multistart, simulated annealing, and a combination of random search and local simulated annealing. The utility of combinatorial optimization is demonstrated in the problem of finding the (sub)optimal semijoin schedule that fully reduces all relations of a tree query. The combination of random search and local simulated annealing was superior to other tested methods     

Coding for high availability of a distributed-parallel storagesystem

We have developed a distributed parallel storage system that employs the aggregate bandwidth of multiple data servers connected by a high-speed wide-area network to achieve scalability and high data throughput. This paper studies different schemes to enhance the reliability and availability of such network-based distributed storage systems. The general approach of this paper employs “erasure” error-correcting codes that can be used to reconstruct missing information caused by hardware, software, or human faults. The paper describes the approach and develops optimized algorithms for the encoding and decoding operations. Moreover, the paper presents techniques for reducing the communication and computation overhead incurred while reconstructing missing data from the redundant information. These techniques include clustering, multidimensional coding, and the full two-dimensional parity schemes. The paper considers trade-offs between redundancy, fault tolerance, and complexity of error recovery