Multi-Objective Dynamic Virtual Machine Consolidation in the Cloud Using Ant Colony System

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Abstract

In this paper, we present a novel multi-objective ant colony system algorithm for virtual machine (VM) consolidation in cloud data centres. The proposed algorithm builds VM migration plans, which are then used to minimise over-provisioning of physical machines (PMs) by consolidating VMs on under-utilised PMs. It optimises two objectives that are ordered by their importance. The first and foremost objective in the proposed algorithm is to maximise the number of released PMs. Moreover, since VM migration is a resource-intensive operation, it also tries to minimise the number of VM migrations. The proposed algorithm is empirically evaluated in a series of experiments. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm provides an efficient solution for VM consolidation in cloud data centres. Moreover, it outperforms two existing ant colony optimization-based VM consolidation algorithms in terms of number of released PMs and number of VM migrations.

Original languageUndefined/Unknown
Pages (from-to)103–120
JournalInternational Journal of Parallel, Emergent and Distributed Systems
Volume33
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2018
MoE publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

Keywords

  • Virtual machine provisioning
  • Consolidation
  • Dynamic VM consolidation
  • ant colony optimization (ACO)
  • Cloud computing

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