The New Jersey Institute of Technology's
Electronic Theses & Dissertations Project

Title:	Autonomous migration of vertual machines for maximizing resource utilization
Author:	Choi, Hyung Won
View Online:	njit-etd2009-051 (xviii, 172 pages ~ 11.0 MB pdf)
Department:	Department of Computer Science
Degree:	Doctor of Philosophy
Program:	Computer Science
Document Type:	Dissertation
Advisory Committee:	Sohn, Andrew (Committee chair) McHugh, James A. (Committee member) Gerbessiotis, Alexandros V. (Committee member) Borcea, Cristian (Committee member) Ansari, Nirwan (Committee member)
Date:	2009-05
Keywords:	Virtualization Linux cluster Virtual machines Resource utilization OS Migration High performance
Availability:	Unrestricted
Abstract:	Virtualization of computing resources enables multiple virtual machines to run on a physical machine. When many virtual machines are deployed on a cluster of PCs, some physical machines will inevitably experience overload while others are under-utilized over time due to varying computational demands. This computational imbalance across the cluster undermines the very purpose of maximizing resource utilization through virtualization. To solve this imbalance problem, virtual machine migration has been introduced, where a virtual machine on a heavily loaded physical machine is selected and moved to a lightly loaded physical machine. The selection of the source virtual machine and the destination physical machine is based on a single fixed threshold value. Key to such threshold-based VM migration is to determine when to move which VM to what physical machine, since wrong or inadequate decisions can cause unnecessary migrations that would adversely affect the overall performance. The fixed threshold may not necessarily work for different computing infrastructures. Finding the optimal threshold is critical. In this research, a virtual machine migration framework is presented that autonomously finds and adjusts variable thresholds at runtime for different computing requirements to improve and maximize the utilization of computing resources. Central to this approach is the previous history of migrations and their effects before and after each migration in terms of standard deviation of utilization. To broaden this research, a proactive learning methodology is introduced that not only accumulates the past history of computing patterns and resulting migration decisions but more importantly searches all possibilities for the most suitable decisions. This research demonstrates through experimental results that the learning approach autonomously finds thresholds close to the optimal ones for different computing scenarios and that such varying thresholds yield an optimal number of VM migrations for maximizing resource utilization. The proposed framework is set up on a cluster of 8 and 16 PCs, each of which has multiple User-Mode Linux (UML)-based virtual machines. An extensive set of benchmark programs is deployed to closely resemble a real-world computing environment. Experimental results indicate that the proposed framework indeed autonomously finds thresholds close to the optimal ones for different computing scenarios, balances the load across the cluster through autonomous VM migration, and improves the overall performance of the dynamically changing computing environment.