E-mc2: A formal framework for energy modelling in cloud computing

Due to energy crisis of the last years, energy waste and sustainability have been brought both into public attention, and under industry and scientific scrutiny. Thus, obtaining high-performance at a reduced cost in cloud environments as reached a turning point where computing power is no longer the most important concern. However, the emphasis is shifting to manage energy efficiently, whereas providing techniques for measuring energy requirements in cloud systems becomes of capital importance. Currently there are different methods for measuring energy consumption in computer systems. The first consists in using power meter devices, which measure the aggregated power use of a machine. Another method involves directly instrumenting the motherboard with multimeters in order to obtain each power connector's voltage and current, thus obtaining real-time power consumption. These techniques provide a very accurate results, but they are not suitable for large-scale environments. On the contrary, simulation techniques provide good scalability for performing experiments of energy consumption in cloud environments. In this paper we propose E-mc(2), a formal framework integrated into the iCanCloud simulation platform for modelling the energy requirements in cloud computing systems. 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.