Challenges in cloud scale data centers

Abstract

Data centers are fascinating places, where the massive scale required to deliver on-line services like web search and cloud hosting turns minor issues into major challenges that must be addressed in the design of the physical infrastructure and the software platform. In this talk, I'll briefly overview the kinds of applications that run in mega-data centers and the workloads they place on the infrastructure. I'll then describe a number of challenges seen in Microsoft's data centers, with the goals of posing questions more than describing solutions and explaining how economic factors, technology issues, and software design interact when creating low-latency, low-cost, high availability services.