Patent ID: 9389920
Filing Date: 2016-07-12
CPC Classification: G06F,H04L

Claim Text:
1. In a control server of a network configured to identify candidate data center clusters (DCCs) for satisfying a service request, a method for grouping (DCs) in a cloud network, the method comprising: receiving, by the control server, a cloud computing service request from a user; identifying a set of candidate DC clusters (DCCs) for satisfying the cloud computing service request, wherein satisfying the cloud computing service request requires providing a plurality of resources to the user; determining selection criteria for the set of candidate DCCs, wherein the selection criteria includes one or more of a network communication cost, a cluster performance metric, a cluster resource equivalence metric, a balance of resource performance metric, and a DCC load index; and ranking the set of candidate DCCs based on the selection criteria, wherein a highest ranked one out of the set of candidate DCCs is selected to satisfy the cloud computing service request, wherein the selection criteria includes the cluster resource equivalence metric, wherein determining the selection criteria comprises: determining a first cluster resource equivalence metric for a first candidate DCC in the set of candidate DCCs, the cluster resource equivalence metric comprising a load variation for a member DC of the first candidate DCC, the load variation corresponding to a variation between two or more resource loads of the member DC as would result from selecting the first candidate DCC to satisfy the cloud computing service request, wherein the load variation is indicative of a degree to which a first available resource of the member data center would be depleted in relation to a second available resource of the member data center as a result of selecting the first candidate DCC to fulfill the cloud computing service request, wherein the selection criteria further includes the network communication cost, wherein determining the selection criteria comprises determining a first network communication cost for a first one of the set of candidate DCCs, the first network communication cost comprising a DC-to-user cost component associated with the first candidate DCC and a DC-to-DC cost component associated with the first candidate DCC, and wherein determining the first network communication cost comprises computing the DC-to-user cost component according to the formula: where m is equal to a number of resources in the plurality of resources, C k is a cost for transporting a unit of data between the user and a member DC providing an instant resource (resource-k), and V k is a volume of data that must be communicated between the user and the member DC providing the resource-k while the resource-k is being provided.