Cloud data centres

Question 1

What observations can you make about Data centres?

Answer 1

• • A lot of servers - Largely homogenous
• • A lot of cables
• • A lot of chassis

Question 2

Where are cloud data centres logically located?

Answer 2

Cloud data centres are logically located in the core part of the Internet, peering directly with Internet Server Providers and Internet eXchange Points (IXP).

Question 3

Describe low-end servers.

Answer 3

Low-end servers share many similarities with desktop PCs. The economic of scale means low-end servers are commodity (cheaper).

Question 4

Regarding ultra low-end servers, does it mean that it is even more preferable to use single core processor servers for building clusters?

Answer 4

No:

• -As the number of offered parallel threads increases, it can become increasingly difficult to reduce serialisation and communication overheads
• -Load balancing becomes harder as it is difficult to predict response times from all parallel tasks.
• -Highly parallel programs are difficult to write and debug.