Let the Clouds Compute: Cost-Efficient Workload Distribution in Infrastructure Clouds

With cloud computing, a virtually inexhaustible pool of computing capacity has become available to IT users. However, given the large number of Infrastructure as a Service offers with differing pricing options, the cost-efficient distribution of workloads poses a complex challenge. In this work-in-progress paper, we formally describe the Cloud-oriented Workload Distribution Problem and propose an exact as well as a heuristic optimization approach. Through an evaluation that is based on realistic data from the cloud market, we examine the performance and practical applicability of these approaches.