Cloud infrastructure planning: models considering an optimisation method, cost and performance requirements.

This paper proposes a methodology and models to support planning and selecting a cloud infrastructure according to availability, COA, performance and cost requirements. An optimisation model based on the GRASP metaheuristic is used to generate a cloud infrastructure with some physical machines and Virtual Machines - VMs configurations. Such a system is represented using an SPN model and closed-form equations to estimate cost and dependability metrics. The proposed method is applied in a case study of a video transcoding service hosted in a cloud environment. The case study demonstrates the selection of cloud infrastructures with the best performance and dependability metrics, considering the use of VP9, VP8 and H264 video codecs and different VM setups. The results show the best configuration choice considering six user profiles. The results also show the computation of the probability of finalising a set of video transcoding jobs by a given time t.