Decomposed multi-objective bin-packing for virtual machine consolidation

In this paper, we describe a novel solution to the problem of virtual machine (VM) consolidation, otherwise known as VM-Packing, as applicable to Infrastructure-asa-Service cloud data centers. Our solution relies on the observation that virtual machines are not infinitely variable in resource consumption. Generally, cloud compute providers offer them in fixed resource allocations. Effectively this makes all VMs of that allocation type (or instance type) generally interchangeable for the purposes of consolidation from a cloud compute provider viewpoint. The main contribution of this work is to demonstrate the advantages to our approach of deconstructing the VM consolidation problem into a two-step process of multidimensional bin packing. The ep is to determine the optimal, but abstract, solution composed of finite groups of equivalent VMs that should reside on each host. The second step selects concrete the managed compute pool to satisfy the optimal abstract solution while enforcing a...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2016
• Where: PEERJCS
• Authors: Eli M. Dow
• Keywords: PEERJCS 2016