Virtualization, Cloud Computing and the Emerging Datacenter Complexity Cliff Convergence of Distributed Clouds, Grids and their Management – CDCGM2013 WETICE2013 – Hammamet, June 17 – 20, 2013 Track Chair’s Report Dr. Rao Mikkilineni IEEE Member C 3 DNA Inc., Campbell, California, USA rao@c3dna.com Dr. Giovanni Morana Head of R&D and Engineering, C 3 DNA Inc., Catania, Italy giovanni.morana@dieei.unict.it Abstract —The Convergence of distributed clouds, grids and their management conference track focuses on virtualization and cloud computing as they enjoy wider acceptance. A recent IDC report predicts that by 2016, $1 of every $5 will be spent on cloud-based software and infrastructure. Three papers address key issues in cloud computing such as resource optimization and scaling to address changing workloads and energy management. In addition, the DIME network architecture proposed in WETICE2010 is discussed in two papers in this conference, both showing its usefulness in addressing fault, configuration, accounting, performance and security of service transactions with in the service oriented architecture implementation and also spanning across multiple clouds. While virtualization has brought resource elasticity and application agility to the services infrastructure management, the resulting layers of orchestration and the lack of end-to-end service visibility and control spanning across multiple service provider infrastructure have added an alarming degree of complexity. Hopefully, reducing the complexity in the next generation datacenters will be a major research topic in this conference. Keywords-component; Cloud Computing; grid computing; Distributed Intelligent Managed Element Networks; Distributed Services Management; Services Virtualization; Parallel Computing; Many-core Servers I. INTRODUCTION While virtualization and cloud computing have brought elasticity to computing resources and agility to applications in a distributed environment, they have also increased complexity of managing various distributed applications contributing to a distributed service transaction delivery by adding layers of orchestration and management systems. There are three major factors contributing to the complexity: 1. Current IT datacenters have evolved from their server- centric, low-bandwidth origins to distributed and high- bandwidth environments where resources can be dynamically allocated to applications using computing, network and storage resource virtualization. While Virtual machines improve resiliency and provide live migration to reduce the recovery time objectives in case of service failures, the increased complexity of hypervisors, their orchestration, Virtual Machine images and their movement and management adds an additional burden in the datacenter. A recent global survey commissioned by Symantec Corporation involving 2,453 IT professionals at organizations in 32 countries concludes [1] that the complexity introduced by virtualization, cloud computing and proliferation of mobile devices is a major problem. The survey asked respondents to rate the level of complexity in each of five areas on a scale of 0 to 10, and the results show that data center complexity affects all aspects of computing, including security and infrastructure, disaster recovery, storage and compliance. For example, respondents on average rated all the areas 6.56 or higher on the complexity scale, with security topping the list at 7.06. The average level of complexity for all areas for companies around the world was 6.69. The survey shows that organizations in the Americas on average rated complexity highest, at 7.81, and those in Asia-Pacific/Japan lowest, at 6.15. 2. As the complexity increases, the response is to introduce more automation of resource administration and operational controls. However, the increased complexity of management of services may be more a fundamental architectural issue related to Gödel’s prohibition of self-reflection in Turing machines [2] than a software design or an operational execution issue. Cockshott et al. [3] conclude their book “Computation and its limits” with the paragraph “The key property of general-purpose computer is that they are general purpose. We can use them to deterministically model any physical system, of which they are not themselves a part, to an arbitrary degree of accuracy. Their logical limits arise when we try to get them to model a part of the world that includes