ENERGY EFFICIENCY TRENDS IN CLOUD COMPUTING

Abstract

 The world, today, is undergoing major energy crisis and associated higher energy costs. Cloud computing has surfaced out as an assurance to thump down energy demands and wastage concerns by reducing the amount of CO₂ emissions whilst enhancing system reliability. The virtualized infrastructure support provided by cloud computing makes it most beneficial as compared to other computing paradigms. The current computing technology is showing drift towards multicore architectures. Multi-cores offer better performance, absorb lesser power and generate lesser heat. Combining the benefits from multicore architectures with virtualization techniques, cloud computing has emerged as prime contender to accomplish energy efficiency. In this paper, the importance of energy efficiency in Clouds has been discussed highlighting the dual-faced nature of cloud, for being a culprit in causing more energy wastage and for being potentially the most suitable option to overcome energy wastage issues. It depicts the utility of multicore architectures, virtualization techniques and consolidation concepts for achieving energy efficient clouds and concludes with a discussion on energy efficient cloud and the future research works specific to cloud-based energy efficiency.