A hierarchical, topology-aware approach to dynamic data centre management

Increasingly, applications are moving into the cloud, which is actually supported by large-scale data centres on the ground. These data centres are complex systems to manage and centralized solutions might not be able to meet the required scale nor make an efficient use of their networks. In this paper, we propose a hierarchical approach to dynamic resource management in data centres, where we leverage the topology of the data centre network to design the management hierarchy. We define a set of aggregate metrics at various levels in the hierarchy to convey system state information to higher management levels, and define managers´ responsibilities and interactions. We evaluate our proposed approach through simulation. Experiments show that this management approach greatly reduces the flow of management data across the data centre network, thus reducing network overhead.