Fault tolerance and quality of service aware virtual machine scheduling algorithm in cloud data centers

How to improve resource utilization of cloud data centers (CDCs) and ensure users’ quality of service (QoS) through efficient virtual machine (VM) scheduling is an urgent problem. Especially when service reliability is taken into consideration, the problem becomes more challenging. However, existing related researches mostly ignore the influence of reliability factors, such as failures and recoveries of computing nodes (CNs), which cannot reflect the realistic situations of real-life CDCs. Therefore, this paper investigates the problem of fault tolerance-aware VM scheduling and formulates it as a multi-objective optimization model with multiple QoS constraints. The proposed model tries to minimize users’ total expenditure and, at the same time, maximize the successful execution rate of their businesses. To solve the proposed optimization model, a greedy-based best fit decreasing (GBFD) algorithm is then developed. The GBFD algorithm adopts a cost efficiency factor whose definition is according to the characteristics of CNs, to select a suitable CN for each VM request. Finally, extensive experiments are conducted to verify the feasibility of the proposed models and algorithm based on both the real-world CDC cluster data sets and the simulation ones. The results show that, first, as expected, fault tolerance significantly influences the performance criteria of VM scheduling and second, in most cases, the developed algorithm can decrease users’ expenditure, increase success rate for executing their business and improve their overall satisfactions. Specifically, under real-world CDC cluster scenario, GBFD algorithm can increase the overall satisfaction of all cloud users by 38.3%, 20.9% and 14.6%, respectively, compared with the other three ones. Thus, the developed algorithm can perform better under fault tolerance-aware cloud environments.