An Efficient VM Selection Strategy for Minimization of Migration in Cloud Environment

Cloud Computing has been one of the most emphasized paradigms over the last few years. Increased usage of Cloud Computing has resulted into the augmentation of energy consumption and emission of carbon footprints in the environment. Many researchers have been working in the different directions to address these issues. Out of various facets, efficient allocation of Virtual Machines (VMs) on hosts could be one of the good paths to save energy of data center. Optimized VM allocation process is divided into two phases viz. (i) selection of VMs to be migrated and (ii) placement of VMs on the new host. During the selection phase, minimizing the number of VMs to be migrated would result into improvement in performance and reduction in SLA violation. In this research, we have proposed a modification in an existing Minimization of Migration algorithm. The existing algorithm works for two scenarios viz. (a) single VM selection and (b) multiple VM selections. We find the scope of enhancement in the existing algorithm, especially in the case of multiple VM selection. In such scenario, the existing algorithm selects a combination of VMs which is not the optimum. We propose our algorithm to optimally select the combination of VMs such that number of VMs to be migrated remains minimal and utilization of host, after migration, reaches nearer (and below) to an upper threshold value. The prospect of this research would to enhance utilization of hosts which would result in a reduction in a number of live hosts resulting in saving in energy consumption.