Heterogeneous Virtual Machines Research Articles

CILP: Co-Simulation-Based Imitation Learner for Dynamic Resource Provisioning in Cloud Computing Environments

Intelligent Virtual Machine (VM) provisioning is central to cost and resource efficient computation in cloud computing environments. As bootstrapping VMs is time-consuming, a key challenge for latency-critical tasks is to predict future workload demands to provision VMs proactively. However, existing AI-based solutions tend to not holistically consider all crucial aspects such as provisioning overheads, heterogeneous VM costs and Quality of Service (QoS) of the cloud system. To address this, we propose a novel method, called CILP, that formulates the VM provisioning problem as two sub-problems of prediction and optimization, where the provisioning plan is optimized based on predicted workload demands. CILP leverages a neural network as a surrogate model to predict future workload demands with a co-simulated digital-twin of the infrastructure to compute QoS scores. We extend the neural network to also act as an imitation learner that dynamically decides the optimal VM provisioning plan. A transformer based neural model reduces training and inference overheads while our novel two-phase decision making loop facilitates in making informed provisioning decisions. Crucially, we address limitations of prior work by including resource utilization, deployment costs and provisioning overheads to inform the provisioning decisions in our imitation learning framework. Experiments with three public benchmarks demonstrate that CILP gives up to 22% higher resource utilization, 14% higher QoS scores and 44% lower execution costs compared to the current online and offline optimization based state-of-the-art methods.

Energy‐efficient sender‐initiated threshold‐based load balancing (e‐STLB) in cloud computing environment

SummaryCloud computing has transformed service delivery through its pay‐per‐use model, supporting diverse users with multiple heterogeneous Virtual Machines (VMs). However, energy consumption has emerged as a critical concern, necessitating cloud resource optimization for environment‐friendly practices. This research paper presents an innovative energy‐efficient threshold‐based sender‐initiated load‐balancing strategy (e‐STLB) to address this concern. The approach employs threshold values to trigger task migration between VMs, ensuring optimal performance while maximizing energy efficiency. The proposed strategy significantly reduces Makespan and increases Resource Utilization in an energy‐conscious manner. Experimental evaluations using Cloudsim 3.0 demonstrate that the e‐STLB outperforms other state‐of‐the‐art solutions, offering a compelling approach to sustainable cloud computing.

A Centralized Multi-Criteria Method for Scheduling Tasks in a Cloud Computing Environment

Task scheduling determines the order of mapping tasks to virtual machines to meet objectives. In this paper, a batch mode heuristic method that is centralized, dynamic, and multi-objective has been presented for scheduling independent tasks with a deadline and belonging to several user levels, using the cloud elasticity in the public cloud environment. In this method, it has been intended to improve the objectives of makespan, deadline violation, total execution cost, and load balancing by considering the tasks’ prioritization based on the criteria of user level, deadline, task length, and selection of heterogeneous virtual machines according to processing power, workload and usage cost. The proposed method was simulated using the CloudSim tool. Besides, the method’s ability to achieve the mentioned goals has been evaluated in comparison with similar methods. The evaluation results, established on standard test data, show that the proposed method has a good performance in improving its objectives.

Virtual Machine Replica Placement Using a Multiobjective Genetic Algorithm

Virtual machine (VM) replication is a critical task in any cloud computing platform to ensure the availability of the cloud service for the end user. In this task, one primary VM resides on a physical machine (PM) and one or more replicas reside on separate PMs. In cloud computing, VM placement (VMP) is a well-studied problem in terms of different goals, such as power consumption reduction. The VMP problem can be solved by using heuristics, namely, first-fit and meta-heuristics such as the genetic algorithm. Despite extensive research into the VMP problem, there are few works that consider VM replication when choosing a VMP. In this context, we proposed studying the problem of optimal VMP considering VM replication requirements. The proposed work frames the problem at hand as a multiobjective problem and adapts a nondominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-III) to address the problem. VM replicas’ placement should consider several dimensions such as the geographical distance between the PM hosting the primary VM and the other PMs hosting the replicas. In addition, to this end, the proposed model aims to minimize (1) power consumption, (2) performance degradation, and (3) the distance between the PMs hosting the primary VM and its replica(s). The proposed method is thoroughly tested on a variety of computing environments with various heterogeneous VMs and PMs, including compute-intensive and memory-intensive environments. The obtained results illustrate the performance disparity between the adapted NSGA-III and MOEA/D methods and other methods of comparison, including heuristic and meta-heuristic approaches, with NSGA-III outperforming other comparison methods. For instance, in memory-intensive and in heterogeneous environments, the NSGA-III method’s performance was superior to the first-fit, next-fit, best-fit, PSO, and MOEA/D methods by 58%, 62%, 64%, 55%, and 31%, respectively.

Reliability-Aware Multi-Objective Memetic Algorithm for Workflow Scheduling Problem in Multi-Cloud System

With the development of cloud computing, multi-cloud systems have become common platforms for hosting and executing workflow applications in recent years. However, the complexity of workflow scheduling increases exponentially because of the diversified billing mechanisms, heterogeneous virtual machines, and reliability of multi-cloud systems. This article focuses on a multi-objective workflow scheduling problem in multi-cloud systems (MOWSP-MCS). The makespan, cost, and reliability are considered the optimization objectives from the perspective of users. Compared with the classical multi-objective workflow scheduling in the cloud environment, MOWSP-MCS allows users to apply the backup technique to improve reliability. To solve the MOWSP-MCS, this article proposes a reliability-aware multi-objective memetic algorithm (RA-MOMA) containing a diversification strategy and intensification strategy. In the diversification strategy, several problem-specific genetic operators are introduced to construct the diversified offspring individuals. In the intensification strategy, four problem-specific neighborhood operators are designed based on the critical path and resource utilization rate to improve the quality of the individuals in the archive set. A comprehensive numerical experiment is conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of RA-MOMA. The comparisons with several related algorithms demonstrate the superiority of RA-MOMA for solving the MOWSP-MCS.

LBAA: A novel load balancing mechanism in cloud environments using ant colony optimization and artificial bee colony algorithms

SummaryRecently, cloud computing has been recognized as an effective paradigm for offering an on‐demand platform, software services, and an efficient infrastructure to cloud clients. Due to the exponential growth of cloud tasks and the rapidly increasing number of cloud users, scheduling and balancing these tasks among involved heterogeneous virtual machines becomes an Non‐deterministic Polynomial hard (NP‐hard) optimization problem considering significant constraints, such as high rate of resource usage, low scheduling time, and low implementation cost. Therefore, various meta‐heuristic algorithms have been widely used to tackle the issue. The current paper proposes a novel load balancing mechanism using the ant colony optimization and artificial bee colony algorithms, called LBAA, which aims to balance the load division among systems in data centers. The simulation outcomes confirm that our algorithm outperforms previous works regarding response time, imbalance degree, makespan, and resource utilization up to 25%, 15%, 12%, and 10%, respectively.

ReMatch: An Efficient Virtual Data Center Re-Matching Strategy Based on Matching Theory

A virtual data center (VDC) comprises multiple virtual machines (VMs) with communication dependencies represented as virtual links (VLs). These virtual components, i.e., VMs and VLs, often experience fluctuating demands across different resource types. In this article, we focus on addressing the issue of dynamic resource expansion that leads to the relocation of solution components (SCs), where a SC comprises a VM and its attached VLs, with either the VM and/or at least one of the VLs facing resource expansion. This is challenging because of the complexity involved in frequently relocating multiple dependent virtual components across the substrate network. This article presents a model called <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">ReMatch</i> that aims at building an efficient remapping plan with reduced remapping cost and improved resource utilization for service providers (SPs) in polynomial time. The overall relocation problem is formulated as a one-to-many matching game with heterogeneous VM demands. Owing to the inapplicability of the classical deferred acceptance algorithm (DAA) and revised DA (RDA), we propose a modified version of the RDA (MRDA) to obtain a weakly stable assignment. Thorough simulation and analysis show that <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">ReMatch</i> outperforms the baseline algorithms considering multiple evaluation metrics.

An Efficient Policy-Based Scheduling and Allocation of Virtual Machines in Cloud Computing Environment

Cloud computing has become the most challenging research field in the current information technology scenario. In this, a set of user tasks are scheduled and allocated to numerous kinds of heterogeneous virtual machines (VMs) in cloud data centers (CDCs), and these VMs are hosted by diverse types of heterogeneous physical machines (PMs). It extends several features, encompassing elasticity, safety, sustainability, and even adequate maintenance compared to traditional data centers. There are numerous techniques available for VM scheduling and allocation. However, it still requires the existence of new mechanisms that can reduce the execution time (ET) of the tasks, improve the optimization of energy usage and resource utilization (RU), and reduce time consumption. Along with optimization, VM scheduling (VMS) and VM allocation (VMA) are two-level issues that need to be considered with essential policies to govern these mechanisms. Hence, for executing optimal VMS and VMA in the data center, new optimization methodologies, such as enhanced shark smell optimization algorithm (ESSOA) at the first level and Brownian movement-centered gravitation search algorithm (BMGSA) at the second level, are proposed in this work to define the policies. Firstly, the user requests for VMs are reserved on the most appropriate PM by the proposed ESSOA, which has the lowest execution cost within deadline limits, and the proposed BMGSA decides the allocation of the chosen VM on the most appropriate PM within the resource limitations at the second level. To demonstrate the proposed algorithm’s efficiency, the simulations are carried out using the Java language-based CloudSim simulator, and the proposed mechanism outcomes acquired are compared with the existing approaches. The simulation results show that the suggested algorithm is efficient in terms of the execution cost, degree of imbalance (DOI), make span (MS), and resource utilization (RU).

Optimization of Load Balancing and Task Scheduling in Cloud Computing Environments Using Artificial Neural Networks-Based Binary Particle Swarm Optimization (BPSO)

As more people utilize the cloud, more employment opportunities become available. With constraints such as a limited make-span, a high utilization rate of available resources, minimal execution costs, and a rapid turnaround time for scheduling, this becomes an NP-hard optimization issue. The number of solutions/combinations increases exponentially with the magnitude of the challenge, such as the number of tasks and the number of computing resources, making the task scheduling problem NP-hard. As a result, achieving the optimum scheduling of user tasks is difficult. An intelligent resource allocation system can significantly cut down the costs and waste of resources. For instance, binary particle swarm optimization (BPSO) was created to combat ineffective heuristic approaches. However, the optimal solution will not be produced if these algorithms are not paired with additional heuristic or meta-heuristic algorithms. Due to the high temporal complexity of these algorithms, they are less useful in real-world settings. For the NP problem, the binary variation of PSO is presented for workload scheduling and balancing in cloud computing. Considering the updating and optimization constraints stated in this research, our objective function determines if heterogeneous virtual machines (VMs) Phave the most significant difference in completion time. In conjunction with load balancing, we developed a method for updating the placements of particles. According to the experiment results, the proposed method surpasses existing metaheuristic and heuristic algorithms regarding work scheduling and load balancing. This level of success has been attainable because of the application of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). ANN has demonstrated promising outcomes in resource distribution. ANN is more accurate and faster than multilayer perceptron networks at predicting targets.

Cost-Efficient Deadline Constrained Scientific Workflow Scheduling in Infrastructure-as-a-Service Clouds by Disqualifying Tasks with Anomalies

Cloud computing has transformed the way businesses and consumers think about their data and businesses. As a result, cloud computing is described as the on-demand availability of all computer system resources via the Internet as a paid service. Enhancing security is a major problem in cloud computing, which is also a major research topic because data is stored and processed in remote locations held by third parties. Another key research subject is the allocation of virtual machines to incoming workloads to decrease the cost of consumers' workload execution in cloud environments. Both of the aforementioned difficulties are addressed in this study. Deadline-constrained workflows are submitted to the application server, which goes through a pre-processing step, that identifies the presence of anomalies in the workflow tasks and disqualifies those tasks with anomalies, and schedules the adjusted workloads into heterogeneous Virtual machines using a modified-PCP algorithm. Our approach is compared to the IC-LOSS and IC-PCP algorithms that are already in use. In comparison to the existing IC-PCP and IC-LOSS algorithms, experimental results suggest that using the modified-PCP algorithm for deadline constrained workflows after deleting those anomalous tasks produces better results.

H3CSA: A makespan aware task scheduling technique for cloud environments

AbstractTask scheduling is essential to enhance the performance of large scale collaborative and distributed e‐business and e‐science applications. A typical such application comprises multiple communicating tasks to be executed on virtualized resources also called as virtual machines (VMs). However, scheduling multiple tasks to VMs is non‐trivial and is proven to be NP‐Complete. The primary agenda of any scheduling technique is to reduce the makespan, which reflects the completion time of the exit task. Focusing on makespan reduction for scheduling multiple tasks across heterogeneous VMs, in this paper, we propose a model called H3CSA based on a meta‐heuristic crow search algorithm (CSA). In order to assess the performance of H3CSA, its performance is compared with baselines such as HEFT‐B, HEFT‐T, HEFT‐L, a genetic algorithm based technique (N‐GA) and particle swarm optimization based technique (PPSO). Simulation results show improved performance of H3CSA with respect to N‐GA and PPSO for smaller applications. However, considering sizeable applications H3CSA shows comparable performance with respect to N‐GA and improved results for PPSO.

Self - Adaptive Load Balancing Using Live Migration of Virtual Machines in Cloud Environment

In this paper, a self-adaptive load balancing technique is proposed using live migration of heterogeneous virtual machines (VM) in a Hyper-V based cloud environment. A cloud supported plugin as a management activity within the infrastructure as a service strategy. It is proposed to assist the load balancing process in such a way so that all hypervisors are almost equally loaded once the overload status gets triggered. In the cloud computing environment, load balancing plays a major role if the large number of events triggered has a high impact on the performance of the system. The efficiency of cloud computing is based on the efficient load balancing having a self-adjustable technique using live migration of VMs across clusters of nodes. The proposed load balancing model is efficient in performance improvement by efficient resource utilization and also it helps to avoid the situation occurrence of server hanging by the cause of server overload within the infrastructure of multiple Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisors environment.

Efficient task scheduling on virtual machine in cloud computing environment

PurposeCloud users can access services at anytime from anywhere in the world. On average, Google now processes more than 40,000 searches every second, which is approximately 3.5 billion searches per day. The diverse and vast amounts of data are generated with the development of next-generation information technologies such as cryptocurrency, internet of things and big data. To execute such applications, it is needed to design an efficient scheduling algorithm that considers the quality of service parameters like utilization, makespan and response time. Therefore, this paper aims to propose a novel Efficient Static Task Allocation (ESTA) algorithm, which optimizes average utilization.Design/methodology/approachCloud computing provides resources such as virtual machine, network, storage, etc. over the internet. Cloud computing follows the pay-per-use billing model. To achieve efficient task allocation, scheduling algorithm problems should be interacted and tackled through efficient task distribution on the resources. The methodology of ESTA algorithm is based on minimum completion time approach. ESTA intelligently maps the batch of independent tasks (cloudlets) on heterogeneous virtual machines and optimizes their utilization in infrastructure as a service cloud computing.FindingsTo evaluate the performance of ESTA, the simulation study is compared with Min-Min, load balancing strategy with migration cost, Longest job in the fastest resource-shortest job in the fastest resource, sufferage, minimum completion time (MCT), minimum execution time and opportunistic load balancing on account of makespan, utilization and response time.Originality/valueThe simulation result reveals that the ESTA algorithm consistently superior performs under varying of batch independent of cloudlets and the number of virtual machines’ test conditions.

ARVMEC: Adaptive Recommendation of Virtual Machines for IoT in Edge–Cloud Environment

Edge–cloud services provide heterogeneous virtual machine types to run various IoT workloads. Choosing the appropriate VM configuration for each workload can effectively improve performance and reduce costs. This article proposes ARVMEC, Adaptive Recommendation of Virtual Machines for IoT in Edge-Cloud Environment, which can always provide users with the best VM recommendation according to their own budget or deadline constraints. ARVMEC uses a tree-based ensemble learning algorithm to make accurate predictions on workload performance for all VM types. It can abstract user purposes in a more flexible and general mode, thus offer reasonable recommendations accordingly. Compared to state-of-art methods, ARVMEC can make better predictions with a 15% improvement in accuracy.

Improving MapReduce scheduler for heterogeneous workloads in a heterogeneous environment

SummaryBig data is largely influencing business entities and research sectors to be more data‐driven. Hadoop MapReduce is one of the cost‐effective ways to process large scale datasets and offered as a service over the Internet. Even though cloud service providers promise an infinite amount of resources available on‐demand, it is inevitable that some of the hired virtual resources for MapReduce are left unutilized and makespan is limited due to various heterogeneities that exist while offering MapReduce as a service. As MapReduce v2 allows users to define the size of containers for the map and reduce tasks, jobs in a batch become heterogeneous and behave differently. Also, the different capacity of virtual machines in the MapReduce virtual cluster accommodate a varying number of map/reduce tasks. These factors highly affect resource utilization in the virtual cluster and the makespan for a batch of MapReduce jobs. Default MapReduce job schedulers do not consider these heterogeneities that exist in a cloud environment. Moreover, virtual machines in MapReduce virtual cluster process an equal number of blocks regardless of their capacity, which affects the makespan. Therefore, we devised a heuristic‐based MapReduce job scheduler that exploits virtual machine and MapReduce workload level heterogeneities to improve resource utilization and makespan. We proposed two methods to achieve this: (i) roulette wheel scheme based data block placement in heterogeneous virtual machines, and (ii) a constrained 2‐dimensional bin packing to place heterogeneous map/reduce tasks. We compared heuristic‐based MapReduce job scheduler against the classical fair scheduler in MapReduce v2. Experimental results showed that our proposed scheduler improved makespan and resource utilization by 45.6% and 47.9% over classical fair scheduler.

Heuristic Load Balancing Based Zero Imbalance Mechanism in Cloud Computing

Cloud computing using virtualization technology has emerged as a new paradigm of large-scale distributed computing. One of its fundamental challenges is to schedule a vast amount of heterogeneous tasks while maintaining load balancing amongst different heterogeneous virtual machines (VMs) to meet both cloud users and providers’ requirements, such as minimum makespan low monetary costs, and high resource utilization. This problem is often classified as, NP-hard optimization, and while many heuristic algorithms have attempted to solve the NP-problem. However, they fail in load balancing and lower running times when the number of tasks grows exponentially, while that of VMs with set of resources, such as CPU, memory RAM and bandwidth remains stagnant. To solve the NP-problem effectively, we propose a fast heuristic algorithm based on the zero imbalance approach, as a new concept in the heterogeneous environment. Specifically, this approach focuses on minimizing the completion time difference among heterogeneous VMs without priority methods and complex scheduling decision which often subject the heuristic algorithms to the particular cloud configuration. The proposed approach defines two constraints, optimal completion time and earliest finish time which take account the task transfer time onto network bandwidth of VM to achieve load balancing and task scheduling effectively. The experimental results below show that the proposed algorithm effectively solves the NP-hard optimization problem better than existing heuristic algorithms by satisfying cloud users and providers’ requirements.

Improved multiobjective salp swarm optimization for virtual machine placement in cloud computing

In data center companies, cloud computing can host multiple types of heterogeneous virtual machines (VMs) and provide many features, including flexibility, security, support, and even better maintenance than traditional centers. However, some issues need to be considered, such as the optimization of energy usage, utilization of resources, reduction of time consumption, and optimization of virtual machine placement. Therefore, this paper proposes an alternative multiobjective optimization (MOP) approach that combines the salp swarm and sine-cosine algorithms (MOSSASCA) to determine a suitable solution for virtual machine placement (VMP). The objectives of the proposed MOSSASCA are to maximize mean time before a host shutdown (MTBHS), to reduce power consumption, and to minimize service level agreement violations (SLAVs). The proposed method improves the salp swarm and the sine-cosine algorithms using an MOP technique. The SCA works by using a local search approach to improve the performance of traditional SSA by avoiding trapping in a local optimal solution and by increasing convergence speed. To evaluate the quality of MOSSASCA, we perform a series of experiments using different numbers of VMs and physical machines. The results of MOSSASCA are compared with well-known methods, including the nondominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II), multiobjective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO), a multiobjective evolutionary algorithm with decomposition (MOEAD), and a multiobjective sine-cosine algorithm (MOSCA). The results reveal that MOSSASCA outperforms the compared methods in terms of solving MOP problems and achieving the three objectives. Compared with the other methods, MOSSASCA exhibits a better ability to reduce power consumption and SLAVs while increasing MTBHS. The main differences in terms of power consumption between the MOSCA, MOPSO, MOEAD, and NSGA-II and the MOSSASCA are 0.53, 1.31, 1.36, and 1.44, respectively. Additionally, the MOSSASCA has higher MTBHS value than MOSCA, MOPSO, MOEAD, and NSGA-II by 362.49, 274.70, 585.73 and 672.94, respectively, and the proposed method has lower SLAV values than MOPSO, MOEAD, and NSGA-II by 0.41, 0.28, and 1.27, respectively.

Low-time complexity and low-cost binary particle swarm optimization algorithm for task scheduling and load balancing in cloud computing

With the increasing large number of cloud users, the number of tasks is growing exponentially. Scheduling and balancing these tasks amongst different heterogeneous virtual machines (VMs) under constraints such as, low makespan, high resource utilization rate, low execution cost and low scheduling time, become NP-hard optimization problem. So, due to the inefficiency of heuristic algorithms, many meta-heuristic algorithms, such as particle swarm optimization (PSO) have been introduced to solve the said problem. However, these algorithms do not guarantee that the optimal solution can be found, if they are not combined with other heuristic or meta-heuristic algorithms. Further, these algorithms have high time complexity, making them less useful in realistic scenarios. To solve the said NP-problem effectively, we propose an efficient binary version of PSO algorithm with low time complexity and low cost for scheduling and balancing tasks in cloud computing. Specifically, we define an objective function which calculates the maximum completion time difference among heterogeneous VMs subject to updating and optimization constraints introduced in this paper. Then, we devise a particle position updating with respect to load balancing strategy. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm achieves task scheduling and load balancing better than existing meta-heuristic and heuristic algorithms.

Performance Analysis and Modeling of Video Transcoding Using Heterogeneous Cloud Services

High-quality video streaming, either in form of Video-On-Demand (VOD) or live streaming, usually requires converting (i.e., transcoding) video streams to match the characteristics of viewers’ devices (e.g., in terms of spatial resolution or supported formats). Considering the computational cost of the transcoding operation and the surge in video streaming demands, Streaming Service Providers (SSPs) are becoming reliant on cloud services to guarantee Quality of Service (QoS) of streaming for their viewers. Cloud providers offer heterogeneous computational services in form of different types of Virtual Machines (VMs) with diverse prices. Effective utilization of cloud services for video transcoding requires detailed performance analysis of different video transcoding operations on the heterogeneous cloud VMs. In this research, for the first time, we provide a thorough analysis of the performance of the video stream transcoding on heterogeneous cloud VMs. Providing such analysis is crucial for efficient prediction of transcoding time on heterogeneous VMs and for the functionality of any scheduling methods tailored for video transcoding. Based upon the findings of this analysis and by considering the cost difference of heterogeneous cloud VMs, in this research, we also provide a model to quantify the degree of suitability of each cloud VM type for various transcoding tasks. The provided model can supply resource (VM) provisioning methods with accurate performance and cost trade-offs to efficiently utilize cloud services for video streaming.

An open Jackson Network Model for Heterogeneous Infrastructure as a Service on Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is an environment which provides services for user demand such as software, platform, infrastructure. Applications which are deployed on cloud computing have become more varied and complex to adapt to increase end-user quantity and fluctuating workload. One popular characteristic of cloud computing is the heterogeneity of network, hosts and virtual machines (VM). There were many studies on cloud computing modeling based on queuing theory, but most studies have focused on homogeneity characteristic. In this study, we propose a cloud computing model based on open Jackson network for multi-tier application systems which are deployed on heterogeneous VMs of IaaS cloud computing. The important metrics are analyzed in our experiments such as mean waiting time; mean request quantity, the throughput of the system. Besides that, metrics in model is used to modify number VMs allocated for applications. Result of experiments shows that open queue network provides high efficiency.