Resource management in data-intensive clouds: Opportunities and challenges

Today's cloud computing platforms have seen much success in running compute-bound applications with time-varying or one-time needs. In this position paper, we will argue that the cloud paradigm is also well suited for handling data-intensive applications, characterized by the processing and storage of data produced by high-bandwidth sensors or streaming applications. The data rates and the processing demands vary over time for many such applications, making the on-demand cloud paradigm a good match for their needs. However, today's cloud platforms need to evolve to meet the storage, communication, and processing demands of data-intensive applications. We present an ongoing GENI project to connect high-bandwidth radar sensor networks with computational and storage resources in the cloud and use this example to highlight the opportunities and challenges in designing end-to-end data-intensive cloud systems.