Toward Waste-Free Cloud Computing

Many previous efforts focus on improving the utlization of data centers. We argue that even highly utilized systems can still waste the resource because of failures and maintenance. Therefore, in this position paper, we call on a new direction of research on waste-free computing. We start with a workable definition of efficiency, then introduce a new efficiency metric called usage efficiency, show how to compute it and propose some possible approaches to improve this type of efficiency. We also calculate the metric through the simulation on real failure traces and diverse workflow applications. While the efficiency computed from the traditional method is 100%, it is less than 44% with our new metric which suggests that the current metrics are inadequate to capture the efficiency of a system.