A multi-objective load balancing algorithm for virtual machine placement in cloud data centers based on machine learning

Abstract

Cloud computing provides utility computing in which clients pay the cost according to their demands and service use. There are some challenges to this technology. One of these issues in data centers is virtual machine (VM) placement so that mapping of these VMs to hosts is executed for a variety of objectives such as load balancing, reducing energy consumption, increasing resource utilization, shortening response time, etc. In this paper, a strategy is presented based on machine learning for VM replacement which aims to balance the load in host machines (HM). In this proposed strategy, the learning agent, in each learning episode by selecting an action from among the permissible actions and executing it on the environment receives a reward according to the desirability of the solution obtained by doing that action in the environment. Receiving a reward from the environment and updating the action value table enable the learner agent to learn in the following episodes that in each environment state, selecting and executing which action is better in the environment and this leads to further enhancement. Our proposed algorithm has, on average, improved the inter-HM load balance in terms of processor, memory, and bandwidth by 25%, 34%, and 32%, respectively, prior to the implementation of the algorithm. Our strategy was compared from diffrent aspects in three scenarios to the MOVMrB strategy. Finally, it was concluded that our proposed algorithm can be more effective in load balancing by having much less runtime and turning off more HMs.