Load balancing optimization in cloud computing: Applying Endocrine-particale swarm optimization

© 2015 IEEE. Load balancing optimization is categorized as NP-hard problem, playing an important role in enhancing the cloud utilization. Different methods have been proposed for achieving the system load balancing in cloud environment. VM migration is one of these techniques, proposed to improve the VMs' functionality. Despite of the advantageous of VM migration, there are still some drawbacks which urged researchers to improve VM migration methods. In this paper we propose a new load balancing technique, using Endocrine algorithm which is inspired from regulation behavior of human's hormone system. Our proposed algorithm achieves system load balancing by applying self-organizing method between overloaded VMs. This technique is structured based on communications between VMs. It helps the overloaded VMs to transfer their extra tasks to another under-loaded VM by applying the enhanced feed backing approach using Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). To evaluate our proposed algorithm, we expanded the cloud simulation tool (Cloudsim) which is developed by University of Melbourne. The simulation result proves that our proposed load balancing approach significantly decreases the timespan compared to traditional load balancing techniques. Moreover it increases the Quality Of Service (QOS) as it minimizes the VMs' downtime

Interoperability in the Heterogeneous Cloud Environment: A Survey of Recent User-centric Approaches

© 2016 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Cloud computing provides users the ability to access shared, online computing resources. However, providers often offer their own proprietary applications, interfaces, APIs and infrastructures, resulting in a heterogeneous cloud environment. This heterogeneous environment makes it difficult for users to change cloud service providers; exploring capabilities to support the automated migration from one provider to another is an active, open research area. Many standards bodies (IEEE, NIST, DMTF and SNIA), industry (middleware) and academia have been pursuing approaches to reduce the impact of vendor lock-in by investigating the cloud migration problem at the level of the VM. However, the migration downtime, decoupling VM from underlying systems and security of live channels remain open issues. This paper focuses on analysing recently proposed live, cloud migration approaches for VMs at the infrastructure level in the cloud architecture. The analysis reveals issues with flexibility, performance, and security of the approaches, including additional loads to the CPU and disk I/O drivers of the physical machine where the VM initially resides. The next steps of this research are to develop and evaluate a new approach LibZam (Libya Zamzem) that will work towards addressing the identified limitations

Immune Network Algorithm applied to the Optimization of Composite SaaS in Cloud Computing

Abstract-In order to serve the different application needs of the different Cloud users efficiently and effectively, a possible solution is the decomposition of the software or so-called composite SaaS (Software as a Service). A composite SaaS constitutes a group of loosely-coupled applications that communicate with each other to form higher-level functionality. The benefits to the SaaS providers are reduced delivery cost and flexible SaaS functions, and the benefit for the users is the decreased cost of subscription. For this to be achieved effectively, the optimization of the process is required in order to manage the SaaS resources in the data center efficiently. In this paper, the optimization task of composite SaaS is investigated using an Immune network optimization approach. The approach makes use of activation and suppression that are mimicked by the natural immune system triggering an immune response not only when antibodies interact with antigens but also when they interact with other antibodies. Experiments are conducted with a series of SaaS configurations and the proposed immune network algorithm is compared with a formerly proposed grouping genetic algorithm. The results show that the immune network algorithm outperforms the grouping genetic algorithm

Time-Constrained Live VM Migration in Share-Nothing IaaS-Clouds

Both economic reasons and interoperation requirements necessitate the deployment of IaaS-clouds based on a share-nothing architecture. Here, live VM migration becomes a major impediment to achieving cloud-wide load balancing via selective and timely VM-migrations. Our approach is based on copying virtual disk images and keeping them synchronized during the VM migration operation. In this way, we ameliorate the limitations set by shared storage cloud designs as we place no constraints on the cloud’s scalability and load-balancing capabilities. We propose a special-purpose file system, termed MigrateFS, that performs virtual disk replication within specified time-constraints while avoiding internal network congestion. Management of resource consumption during VM migration is supervised by a low-overhead and scalable distributed network of brokers. We show that our approach can reduce up to 24% the stress of already saturated physical network links during load balancing operations

Έμβια Μετανάστευση Docker Containers

Το Docker είναι ένας τρόπος virtualization, που προσφέρει άμεση λειτουργική αναδιάταξη και κλιμάκωση εφαρμογών σε περιβάλλον νέφους. Το Docker χρησιμοποιεί τα Linux Containers (LXCs) και προσθέτει νέα χαρακτηριστικά όπως φορητότητα των containers, versioning στα images που χρησιμοποιούνται και επαναχρησιμοποίηση. Σε αυτή τη διπλωματική εργασία εξετάζουμε το πρόβλημα της Έμβιας Μετανάστευσης (Live Migration) εφαρμογών πάνω σε Docker Containers. Πιο συγκεκριμένα ενδιαφερόμαστε για τεχνικές που επιτρέπουν την επιτυχή μεταφορά ενός Docker container από ένα φυσικό ή εικονικό μηχάνημα σε ένα άλλο, χωρίς ο τελικός χρήστης να διαπιστώσει κάποια διακοπή στην εργασία του. Προτείνουμε ένα πρωτόκολλο για το παραπάνω σημαντικά πρακτικό πρόβλημα και παρέχουμε την υλοποίησή ενός πρωτοτύπου που είναι σε θέση να μεταφέρει containers που τρέχουν Apache Web Servers ή/και MySQL βάσεις δεδομένων. Στην αξιολόγηση του πρωτοτύπου μας παρατηρήσαμε αρκετά καλούς χρόνους ολοκλήρωσης ενός Migration και μικρή επιβάρυνση στις υπηρεσίες του χρήστη από την υλοποίηση μας.Docker is a new way of virtualization that enables immediate deployment and scalability of applications in a Cloud environment. Docker uses Linux Containers (LXCs) and enhances them with new functionalities like portability of containers, versioning of images and reusability. In this thesis we focus to Live Migration of Applications in Docker Containers. More specifically, we are interested in techniques that are used for the successful migration of a Docker Container from a physical or virtual machine to another, without the any user interruption. We propose a new protocol for the above major problem and we provide the implementation of a prototype that is capable to migrate Docker Containers with Apache Web Servers or/and MySQL Databases. In the evaluation of our prototype, we noticed sufficient migration times and a small overhead to user from our implementation