Mining for Cost Awareness in the Infrastructure as Code Artifacts of Cloud-based Applications: an Exploratory Study

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Feitosa, Daniel, Penca, Matei-Tudor, Berardi, Massimiliano, Boza, Rares-Dorian, Andrikopoulos, Vasilios
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2023
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author Feitosa, Daniel
Penca, Matei-Tudor
Berardi, Massimiliano
Boza, Rares-Dorian
Andrikopoulos, Vasilios
author_facet Feitosa, Daniel
Penca, Matei-Tudor
Berardi, Massimiliano
Boza, Rares-Dorian
Andrikopoulos, Vasilios
contents Context: The popularity of cloud computing as the primary platform for developing, deploying, and delivering software is largely driven by the promise of cost savings. Therefore, it is surprising that no empirical evidence has been collected to determine whether cost awareness permeates the development process and how it manifests in practice. Objective: This study aims to provide empirical evidence of cost awareness by mining open source repositories of cloud-based applications. The focus is on Infrastructure as Code artifacts that automate software (re)deployment on the cloud. Methods: A systematic search through 152,735 repositories resulted in the selection of 2,010 relevant ones. We then analyzed 538 relevant commits and 208 relevant issues using a combination of inductive and deductive coding. Results: The findings indicate that developers are not only concerned with the cost of their application deployments but also take actions to reduce these costs beyond selecting cheaper cloud services. We also identify research areas for future consideration. Conclusion: Although we focus on a particular Infrastructure as Code technology (Terraform), the findings can be applicable to cloud-based application development in general. The provided empirical grounding can serve developers seeking to reduce costs through service selection, resource allocation, deployment optimization, and other techniques.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2304_07531
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Mining for Cost Awareness in the Infrastructure as Code Artifacts of Cloud-based Applications: an Exploratory Study
Feitosa, Daniel
Penca, Matei-Tudor
Berardi, Massimiliano
Boza, Rares-Dorian
Andrikopoulos, Vasilios
Software Engineering
D.2.9; K.6.2
Context: The popularity of cloud computing as the primary platform for developing, deploying, and delivering software is largely driven by the promise of cost savings. Therefore, it is surprising that no empirical evidence has been collected to determine whether cost awareness permeates the development process and how it manifests in practice. Objective: This study aims to provide empirical evidence of cost awareness by mining open source repositories of cloud-based applications. The focus is on Infrastructure as Code artifacts that automate software (re)deployment on the cloud. Methods: A systematic search through 152,735 repositories resulted in the selection of 2,010 relevant ones. We then analyzed 538 relevant commits and 208 relevant issues using a combination of inductive and deductive coding. Results: The findings indicate that developers are not only concerned with the cost of their application deployments but also take actions to reduce these costs beyond selecting cheaper cloud services. We also identify research areas for future consideration. Conclusion: Although we focus on a particular Infrastructure as Code technology (Terraform), the findings can be applicable to cloud-based application development in general. The provided empirical grounding can serve developers seeking to reduce costs through service selection, resource allocation, deployment optimization, and other techniques.
title Mining for Cost Awareness in the Infrastructure as Code Artifacts of Cloud-based Applications: an Exploratory Study
topic Software Engineering
D.2.9; K.6.2
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.07531