AutoMigrate: A Framework for Developing Intelligent, Self-Managing Cloud Services with Maximum Availability

Abstract

Cloud services are on-demand services provided to end-users over the Internet and hosted by cloud service providers. A cloud service consists of a set of interacting applications/processes running on one or more interconnected VMs. Organizations are increasingly embracing cloud services as a means of outsourcing their IT departments. However, cloud service availability is not guaranteed, especially in the event of anomalous circumstances that spontaneously disrupt availability (e.g., natural disasters, power failure, cybersecurity attacks, etc.). In this paper, we propose a framework for developing intelligent systems that can monitor and migrate cloud services to maximize their availability in case of cloud disruption. The framework includes a virtual machine selection algorithm that maximizes the availability of high priority services during migration under time and network bandwidth constraints. The framework also facilitates the incorporation of algorithms for automatically detecting anomalies to trigger live migration of cloud services. We implemented the framework and conducted experiments to evaluate the performance of the underlying techniques. Based on the experiments, the use of this framework results in less downtime due to migration, thereby leading to reduced cloud service disruption.