Glasgow Caledonian University
SEBE PhD Research Project Portfolio
Project Reference Number
SEBE_NCS_HT_1
School/Institute/Research Group
School of Engineering and Built Environment/Institute for Sustainable
Engineering and Technology Research/Networking
Research Discipline
Cloud computing, self-optimising computing, green ICT, energy-efficient
information infrastructure and data centre
Project Title
Green cloud computing
Research Project Summary
Cloud computing is a fundamental revolution to computing. In cloud
computing paradigm, computing facilities and resources are virtualized, and
then delivered to users. By this way, resource providers and consumers are
separated so that providers are able to pool, integrate, maintain and manage
heterogeneous resources in a very large scale while users are relieved from
complexity and can concentrate on their customised access flexibly to the
resources. Contrast to conventional computing, the concept of cloud
computing itself already supports enhanced utilisation of resources.
This PhD programme aims to conduct a systematic investigation on the selfoptimising process that underpins green cloud computing. It will be based on
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) model of cloud computing, and fully explore
the potential for system optimisation that is made possible with the
architectural reconfigurability across multiple virtual machines on a cloud
platform.
The scientific value of green cloud computing is far beyond “cloud” itself.
Essentially, it realises the profound concept that computing resources are to
be provisioned to users and what’s more, such provisioning of resources is
made truly on-demand as a result of the search for the optimisation of
resource configurations. The self-optimising process results from a closed
loop. The status of the virtual machines is monitored and fed back into the
optimisation process for the on-demand configuration and provisioning of
resources. By this way, the green cloud computing will be made sure to be a
fault-tolerant and robust self-optimising process.
The benefits of green cloud computing is two-folded. It guarantees a better
user experience, and cloud simply makes computing an everyday utility usable
for public uptake. On the other hand, green cloud computing is changing the
whole IT practices. Traditional IT is “bad” for its stiff configuration, poor
utilisation, and low energy efficacy. Green cloud computing opens new ways
of IT industry practices, and generates significant societal, organisational and
business impacts.
Supervisory Team
Prof Huaglory Tianfield, VOTER Lab, SEBE, GCU
Dr Hong Yue, Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University
of Strathclyde
Staff Contact
Prof H Tianfield
H.tianfield@gcu.ac.uk