A comparative study of resource allocation strategies for a green cloud

Cloud computing has emerged as a new paradigm of distributed computing. A cloud encompasses data centers in order to facilitate cloud computing. A data center consists of a large number of servers or hosts which are the key factor of cloud environment. The use of the enormous amount of computing and data centers generally leads to consumption of large amount of energy which further causes the increasing carbon footprint. The green cloud computing can be achieved by allocating the resources in a power potential way. Therefore, the datacenter resources have to be distributed such that energy efficiency is maximized. The present paper surveys various resource allocation strategies and methods that are efficient in terms of energy. These strategies have been compared on the basis of their techniques, advantages and limitations. The performance metrics of every strategy have also been represented.