A complex network approach to cloud computing

Cloud computing has become an important means to speed up computing. One problem influencing heavily the performance of such systems is the choice of nodes as servers responsible for executing the clients' tasks. In this article we report how complex networks can be used to model such a problem. More specifically, we investigate the performance of the processing respectively to cloud systems underlaid by Erdos-Renyi (ER) and Barabasi-Albert (BA) topology containing two servers. Cloud networks involving two communities not necessarily of the same size are also considered in our analysis. The performance of each configuration is quantified in terms of the cost of communication between the client and the nearest server, and the balance of the distribution of tasks between the two servers. Regarding the latter, the ER topology provides better performance than the BA for smaller average degrees and opposite behaviour for larger average degrees. With respect to cost, smaller values are found in the BA topology irrespective of the average degree. In addition, we also verified that it is easier to find good servers in ER than in BA networks. Surprisingly, balance and cost are not too much affected by the presence of communities. However, for a well-defined community network, we found that it is important to assign each server to a different community so as to achieve better performance.