On the planning of a hybrid IT infrastructure

Abstract

With the emergence of utility computing and the continuous search for reducing the cost of running information technology (IT) infrastructures, we will soon experience an important change on the way these infrastructures are assembled, configured and managed. In this paper we consider the problem of managing a hybrid high-performance computing infrastructure whose processing elements comprise in-house dedicated machines, a utility computing service provider, and idle machines from a best-effort peer-to-peer grid. This infrastructure supports the execution of both best-effort and real-time applications. Realtime applications use primarily computing power from the in- house machines and any processing power that can be attained from the best-effort grid. Extra capacity required to meet deadlines is purchased from the utility computing service provider. This extra capacity is reserved for future use through short term contracts which are negotiated with no human intervention. We take a business-driven approach for the management of this hybrid infrastructure and propose heuristics that can be used by a contract planner agent to reduce the cost of running the applications at the same time that guarantees that deadlines are met. In particular, we show that constructing an estimation for the behavior of the grid is essential for making contracts that lead to high efficiency in the use of the hybrid infrastructure.