Evaluation of node failures in cloud computing using empirical data

Cloud has emerged as a new computing paradigm that promises to move into computing-as-utility era. Desktop Cloud is a new type of Cloud computing introduced to further achieve this ambition with an aim to reduce costs. It merges two computing models: Cloud computing and volunteer computing. The aim of Desktop Cloud is to provide Cloud services out of infrastructure that is not made for this purpose, like PCs and laptops. Such computing resources lead to a high level of volatility as a result of the fact that they can leave without prior knowledge. This paper studies the impact of node failures using evaluation metrics based on real data collected from public archive to simulate failure events in the infrastructure of a Desktop Cloud. The contribution of this paper is: (i) analysing the failure events, (ii) proposing metrics to evaluate Desktop Clouds, and (iii) evaluating several VM allocation mechanisms in the presence of node failures.