Title: Virtual machine allocation strategy in energy-efficient cloud data centres

Authors: Shunfu Jin; Xiuchen Qie; Shanshan Hao

Addresses: School of Information Science and Engineering, Yanshan University, No. 438, Hebei Avenue, Qinhuangdao, 066004, China; Key Laboratory for Computer Virtual Technology and System Integration of Hebei Province, No. 438, Hebei Avenue, Qinhuangdao, 066004, China; Science and Technology on Communication Networks Laboratory, No. 589, West Zhongshan Road, Shijiazhuang, 050081, China ' School of Information Science and Engineering, Yanshan University, No. 438, Hebei Avenue, Qinhuangdao, 066004, China; Key Laboratory for Computer Virtual Technology and System Integration of Hebei Province, No. 438, Hebei Avenue, Qinhuangdao, 066004, China; Science and Technology on Communication Networks Laboratory, No. 589, West Zhongshan Road, Shijiazhuang, 050081, China ' School of Information Science and Engineering, Yanshan University, No. 438, Hebei Avenue, Qinhuangdao, 066004, China; Key Laboratory for Computer Virtual Technology and System Integration of Hebei Province, No. 438, Hebei Avenue, Qinhuangdao, 066004, China; Science and Technology on Communication Networks Laboratory, No. 589, West Zhongshan Road, Shijiazhuang, 050081, China

Abstract: Energy consumption is significant in cloud data centres even when some virtual machines (VMs) are idle. Taking into account both the energy efficiency and the response performance, we propose a VM allocation strategy with speed switch and VM consolidation in the cloud data centre. When the traffic is lighter, the processing speed of VMs in baseline module will be switched between a low speed and a high speed. When the traffic is much heavier, the VMs in reserved module will be consolidated with the VMs in baseline module, and operates at a high speed. We establish a two-dimensional Markov chain to mathematically estimate the energy-saving degree and the response performance. Numerical experiments with analysis and simulation show that our proposed VM allocation strategy can effectively reduce the energy consumption as well as guarantee the response performance.

Keywords: cloud data centre; energy efficiency; VM allocation; speed switch; VM consolidation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCNDS.2019.097654

International Journal of Communication Networks and Distributed Systems, 2019 Vol.22 No.2, pp.181 - 195

Received: 11 Jan 2018
Accepted: 22 Feb 2018

Published online: 04 Feb 2019 *

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