Cloud Computing Energy Efficiency - Research Proposal Example

The concerns regarding the environmental impacts as well as the energy needs of data centers such as the cloud have been growing with the exponential increase in data centers. Consequently, the potential gains in energy efficiency by moving the software of businesses to the cloud are largely attributed to the fact that the data centers and servers currently hosting cloud services are significantly more efficient and green than the IT infrastructure that is currently used by most companies [8]. These energy savings are particularly significant for smaller companies which often tend to possess some of the most inefficient IT services.

Background
Despite the general agreement that clouds computing is currently more efficient than many of its alternatives, the implementation of cloud computing has faced several power and energy consumption concerns, particularly about the power and energy consumed by modern cloud computing systems and data center equipment as well as the connected cooling systems (Jayant, 2010). The energy is mainly consumed when transporting the required data from the users to the cloud data centers and then back.
Data centers currently consume nearly 1.4% of the entire global electrical energy with an average growth rate of 12% annually. Skeptics argue that the greenhouse gas production associated with the power consumption at data centers will double shortly if the current popularity of cloud services continues. Moreover, the high consumption of power also often results in the release of heat which may further cause energy inefficiencies due to the increased amount of energy required for removing the heat(cooling) as well as the high probability of hardware system failures[1].
Another potential cloud computing energy efficiency problem is the increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Although supercomputers normally provide an unraveled high level of computational ability, this usually comes at the expense of high power consumption used to run as well as cool the supercomputers [4]. For example, in 2007, it was reported that cloud computing consumed approximately 623 terawatt-hours of energy and this is expected to significantly rise by the year 2020 due to the high growth of cloud computing technologies [3]. In addition, the enormous GHG emissions associated with cloud computing infrastructure have also increased environmental concerns due to the high carbon footprint of cloud infrastructure and data centers (DCs) which is expected to hit 1,034 Mt by the year 2020.
However, there are several potential solutions to the current problems and issues associated with the energy efficiency of cloud computing. For example, some researchers have proposed that the energy use in the cloud environment can be significantly reduced by adopting an approach known as Dynamic Voltage/Frequency Scaling (DVFS) that adjusts the power status of the servers by turning the servers on and off [1]. Generally, DVFS also adjusts the energy consumption of CPUs according to the available workload. However, it is worth noting that the scope of their use is still limited to CPUs.

Another viable solution to the problem of energy efficiency is a consolidation of data centers using virtual machines to increase the utilization of individual servers as well as reduce the number of active servers. This is particularly important as improved consolidation may significantly reduce the aggregate energy consumption while at the same time cryptically increasing the effectiveness of power usage thereby resulting in greater energy efficiency [11].
Finally, a powerful modeling technique for cooling systems in data centers has also been proposed as a potential energy optimization strategy that can significantly help solve the problem of energy efficiency in cloud computing [7]. Generally, the concerns regarding the environmental impacts as well as the energy needs of data centers such as the cloud have been growing with the exponential increase in data centers. The present research proposal seeks to critically analyze the energy efficiency of cloud computing with a particular focus on the infrastructure supporting cloud computing including server and network equipment as well as the cloud management appliances and systems.

Research Questions
The primary research question for this research is: What is the potential energy efficiency of cloud computing? The other important research questions include:
i. How green or energy efficient is cloud computing?
ii. What are the currently existing solutions to the issue of energy efficiency in cloud computing?
The above research 3 questions are critically significant as they all seek to critically investigate the energy efficiency of cloud computing as well as some of the potential solutions to the current problems and issues associated with the energy efficiency of cloud computing. For example, the primary research question is particularly important given the current massive investments in cloud computing and data technologies as well as the growing concerns of many companies for sustainability, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and their carbon footprints.  Read More