Matrix based proactive resource provisioning in mobile cloud environment

Mobile cloud computing is a dynamic, virtually scalable and network based computing environment where mobile device acts as a thin client and applications run on remote cloud servers. Mobile cloud computing resources required by different users depend on their respective personalized applications. Therefore, efficient resource provisioning in mobile clouds is an important aspect that needs special attention in order to make the mobile cloud computing a highly optimized entity. This paper proposes an adaptive model for efficient resource provisioning in mobile clouds by predicting and storing resource usages in a two dimensional matrix termed as resource provisioning matrix. These resource provisioning matrices are further used by an independent authority to predict future required resources using artificial neural network. Independent authority also checks and verifies resource usage bill computed by cloud service provider using resource provisioning matrices. It provides cost computation reliability for mobile customers in mobile cloud environment. Proposed model is implemented on Hadoop using three different applications. Results indicate that proposed model provides better mobile cloud resources utilization as well as maintains quality of service for mobile customer. Proposed model increases battery life of mobile device and decreases data usage cost for mobile customer.     

A fault‐tolerant dynamic scheduling method on hierarchical mobile edge cloud computing

Mobile edge cloud computing has been a promising computing paradigm, where mobile users could offload their application workloads to low‐latency local edge cloud resources. However, compared with remote public cloud resources, conventional local edge cloud resources are limited in computation capacity, especially when serve large number of mobile applications. To deal with this problem, we present a hierarchical edge cloud architecture to integrate the local edge clouds and public clouds so as to improve the performance and scalability of scheduling problem for mobile applications. Besides, to achieve a trade‐off between the cost and system delay, a fault‐tolerant dynamic resource scheduling method is proposed to address the scheduling problem in mobile edge cloud computing. The optimization problem could be formulated to minimize the application cost with the user‐defined deadline satisfied. Specifically, firstly, a game‐theoretic scheduling mechanism is adopted for resource provisioning and scheduling for multiprovider mobile applications. Then, a mobility‐aware dynamic scheduling strategy is presented to update the scheduling with the consideration of mobility of mobile users. Moreover, a failure recovery mechanism is proposed to deal with the uncertainties during the execution of mobile applications. Finally, experiments are designed and conducted to validate the effectiveness of our proposal. The experimental results show that our method could achieve a trade‐off between the cost and system delay.     

Dynamic application placement in the Mobile Cloud Network

To meet the challenges of consistent performance, low communication latency, and a high degree of user mobility, cloud and Telecom infrastructure vendors and operators foresee a Mobile Cloud Network that incorporates public cloud infrastructures with cloud augmented Telecom nodes in forthcoming mobile access networks. A Mobile Cloud Network is composed of distributed cost- and capacity-heterogeneous resources that host applications that in turn are subject to a spatially and quantitatively rapidly changing demand. Such an infrastructure requires a holistic management approach that ensures that the resident applications’ performance requirements are met while sustainably supported by the underlying infrastructure. The contribution of this paper is three-fold. Firstly, this paper contributes with a model that captures the cost- and capacity-heterogeneity of a Mobile Cloud Network infrastructure. The model bridges the Mobile Edge Computing and Distributed Cloud paradigms by modelling multiple tiers of resources across the network and serves not just mobile devices but any client beyond and within the network. A set of resource management challenges is presented based on this model. Secondly, an algorithm that holistically and optimally solves these challenges is proposed. The algorithm is formulated as an application placement method that incorporates aspects of network link capacity, desired user latency and user mobility, as well as data centre resource utilisation and server provisioning costs. Thirdly, to address scalability, a tractable locally optimal algorithm is presented. The evaluation demonstrates that the placement algorithm significantly improves latency, resource utilisation skewness while minimising the operational cost of the system. Additionally, the proposed model and evaluation method demonstrate the viability of dynamic resource management of the Mobile Cloud Network and the need for accommodating rapidly mobile demand in a holistic manner.     

Multi-Layer Resource Management in Cloud Computing

The paper studies multi-layer optimization in service oriented cloud computing to optimize the utility function of cloud computing, subject to resource constraints of an IaaS provider at the resource layer, service provisioning constraints of a SaaS provider at the service layer, and user QoS (quality of service) constraints of cloud users at application layer, respectively. The multi-layer optimization problem can be decomposed into three subproblems: cloud computing resource allocation problem, SaaS service provisioning problem, and user QoS maximization problem. The proposed algorithm decomposes the global optimization problem of cloud computing into three sub-problems via an iterative algorithm. The experiments are conducted to test the efficiency of the proposed algorithm with varying environmental parameters. The experiments also compare the performance of the proposed approach with other related work.     

Cloudlet dynamic server selection policy for mobile task off-loading in mobile cloud computing using soft computing techniques

Wide acceptance of mobile phones and their resource hungry applications have highlighted resource limitations of mobile devices. In this regard, cloud computing has provided mobile phones with unlimited resources in order to help them overcome their constraints and enable them to support wider range of applications; so, mobile devices can outsource their tasks to public or local clouds. To accommodate to exponential growth of requests, user requests should be distributed to different cloudlets and then transparently and dynamically redirected to the servers according to the latest network and server status. Therefore, finding the best place to off-load is vital and crucial to both functionality and performance of the system. However, accurate and timely parameters of network and servers’ status are improbable to achieve, so the traditional algorithms cannot perform effectively and fully efficient. As a solution in this paper, an adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system is proposed and trained to assign tasks to the servers efficiently. The trained system is robust to imprecise context information and is tolerable measurement noise and errors. We have considered improving both system performance and user quality of service parameters in this paper. Simulation results demonstrate that, compared with other server selection schemes, the proposed scheme can achieve higher resource utilization (utilization is a percentage of time that a server is busy doing something), provide better user-perceived quality of service, and efficiently deal with network dynamics. Simulation results show that our proposed algorithm excels over the compared works in terms of performance, at the best case about 30% and at the worst case about 8.93%.     

基于拍卖的虚拟机动态供应和分配算法

当前云计算供应商通过定价算法或类似拍卖的算法来分配他们的虚拟机（VM）实例。然而,这些算法大多要求虚拟机静态供应,无法准确预测用户需求,导致资源未得到充分利用。为此,提出了一种基于组合拍卖的虚拟机动态供应和分配算法,在做出虚拟机供应决策时考虑用户对虚拟机的需求。该算法将可用的计算资源看成是“流体”资源,且这些资源根据用户请求可分为不同数量、不同类型的虚拟机实例。然后可根据用户的估价决定分配策略,直到所有资源分配完毕。基于Parallel Workload Archive（并行工作负载存档）的真实工作负载数据进行了仿真实验,结果表明该方法可保证为云供应商带来更高收入,提高资源利用率。     

Energy constrained resource allocation optimization for mobile grids

A mobile grid incorporates mobile devices into Grid systems. But mobile devices at present have severe limitations in terms of processing, memory capabilities and energy. Minimizing the energy usage in mobile devices poses significant challenges in mobile grids. This paper presents energy constrained resource allocation optimization for mobile grids. The goal of the paper is not only to reduce energy consumption, but also to improve the application utility in a mobile grid environment with a limited energy charge, ensuring battery lifetime and the deadlines of the grid applications. The application utility not only depends on its allocated resources including computation and communication resources, but also on the consumed energy, this leads to a coupled utility model, where the utilities are functions of allocated resources and consumed energy. Energy constrained resources allocation optimization is formulated as a utility optimization problem, which can be decomposed into two subproblems, the interaction between the two sub-problems is controlled through the use of a pricing variable. The paper proposes a price-based distributed energy constrained resources allocation optimization algorithm. In the simulation, the performance evaluation of our energy constrained resources allocation optimization algorithm is conducted.     

基于移动云计算的计算迁移能效算法

移动云计算可以通过应用任务的计算迁移降低执行延时和改善移动设备能效,但面对多云站点选择时,迁移决策是NP问题。针对该问题,提出一种能效计算迁移算法。为了实现截止期限和预算约束下执行时间与代价的多目标优化,算法将优化过程分解为三步进行。首先根据用户对时间与代价参数的偏好,设计一种CTTPO算法对应用进行分割,生成迁移模块（云端站点执行）和非迁移模块（移动设备执行）;然后为了实现云端多站点间的迁移模块调度,设计一种基于教与学最优化方法的MTS算法,进而产生效率最优的应用调度解;最后设计一种基于动态电压缩放方法的ESM算法,通过多站点的性能缩放进一步降低应用执行能耗。通过两种随机应用结构图进行了仿真实验,实验结果证明,该算法在执行效率、执行代价以及执行能耗上要优于对比算法。     

面向移动云计算弹性应用的安全模型

根据云计算资源建立了资源受限设备弹性应用的安全模型。首先介绍了由一个或多个Weblet组成的一个弹性应用程序,每个Weblet可在移动设备端或云端启动,Weblet之间可根据所处的计算环境的动态变化或用户的配置进行迁移。分析了该模式的安全性,提出建立弹性应用程序的安全设计模型,包括实现Weblet运行所在的移动设备端和云端之间的身份验证、安全会话管理和通过外部网络的访问服务。该模型解决了Weblet之间的安全迁移和授权云Weblet通过外部Web网络去访问敏感用户数据的问题。该方案能应用在云计算场景,如在企业应用环境下的私有云和公有云之间的应用集成。     

A hybrid heuristic queue based algorithm for task assignment in mobile cloud

This paper presents a novel algorithm for task assignment in mobile cloud computing environments in order to reduce offload duration time while balancing the cloudlets’ loads. The algorithm is proposed for a two-level mobile cloud architecture, including public cloud and cloudlets. The algorithm models each cloud and cloudlet as a queue to consider cloudlets’ limited resources and study response time more accurately. Performance factors and resource limitations of cloudlets such as waiting time for clients in cloudlets can be determined using queue models. We propose a hybrid genetic algorithm (GA) - Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm to minimize mean completion time of offloaded tasks for the whole system. Simulation results confirm that the proposed hybrid heuristic algorithm has significant improvements in terms of decreasing mean completion time, total energy consumption of the mobile devices, number of dropped tasks over Queue based Random, Queue based Round Robin and Queue based weighted Round Robin assignment algorithms. Also, to prove the superiority of our queue based algorithm, it is compared with a dynamic application scheduling algorithm, HACAS, which has not considered queue in cloudlets.     

混合云中的一个高效协调器

云计算提供了4种部署模型:公有云、私有云、社区云和混合云.通常,一个私有云中可用的资源是有限的,因此云用户不得不从公有云租用资源.这意味着云用户将会产生额外的费用.越来越多的企业选择混合云来部署它们的应用.在混合云中,为了实现用户的利益最大化,必须满足使用资源的费用最小化和用户的QoS,为此为混合云用户提供了一个既能最小化资源费用又能保证满足QoS的资源分配方法.实验结果表明,该算法在保持低操作成本的同时还满足了用户的QoS.     

移动边缘计算环境下的动态资源分配策略

在通讯设备爆炸式增长的时代,移动边缘计算作为5G通讯技术的核心技术之一,对其进行合理的资源分配显得尤为重要。移动边缘计算的思想是把云计算中心下沉到基站部署(边缘云),使云计算中心更加靠近用户,以快速解决计算资源分配问题。但是,相对于大型的云计算中心,边缘云的计算资源有限,传统的虚拟机分配方式不足以灵活应对边缘云的计算资源分配问题。为解决此问题,提出一种根据用户综合需求变化的动态计算资源和频谱分配算法(DRFAA),采用"分治"策略,并将资源模拟成"流体"资源进行分配,以寻求较大的吞吐量和较低的传输时延。实验仿真结果显示,动态计算资源和频谱分配算法可以有效地降低用户与边缘云之间的传输时延,也可以提高边缘云的吞吐量。     

采用随机规划模型的云资源分配算法

针对云资源提供问题,为了降低云消费者的资源使用成本,提出了一种采用随机规划模型的云资源分配算法.同时考虑按需实例和预留实例,采用两阶段随机整数规划对云资源提供问题进行建模,在资源预留阶段,根据长期的工作负载情况,确定预留实例的类型和数量,在按需分配阶段,根据当前的工作负载,确定动态分配的按需实例的类型和数量.采用抽样平均近似方法减少资源提供问题的场景数量,降低求解复杂度,并提出了一种基于阶段分解的混合进化算法求解资源提供问题.仿真实验结果表明,采用随机规划模型的云资源分配算法能够在较短时间内获得近似最优的云资源预留方案,有效降低了云消费者的资源使用成本.     

Resource pricing and offloading decisions in mobile edge computing based on the Stackelberg game

We propose a new approach for the organic integration of edge cloud offloading decision and Stackelberg game pricing to address the problem that the current Stackelberg games all allocate edge cloud computing resources equally and ignore the difference of different users’ demand for computing resources. Firstly, the Stackelberg game theory is used to establish a model of the optimal amount of data to be offloaded by users and the optimal number of computing resource blocks to be purchased, which converts the multivariate offloading decision problem of users into a univariate optimization problem, simplifies the offloading decision problem of users, and proves the existence of Nash equilibrium. Secondly, the KKT condition is applied to realize the offloading decision of users to purchase the optimal computing resource blocks. The upper and lower bounds of edge cloud pricing are established. Finally, a dynamic programming-based offloading (DPPO) algorithm for edge cloud pricing is proposed to achieve the optimal pricing of edge cloud utility and maximize each user’s own utility. The simulation results show that the proposed method not only achieves the equilibrium of edge cloud utility and user utility, but also has good convergence and scalability. The DPPO algorithm yields better results than with different pricing and offloading strategies.

     

Preemptive cloud resource allocation modeling of processing jobs

Cloud computing allows execution and deployment of different types of applications such as interactive databases or web-based services which require distinctive types of resources. These applications lease cloud resources for a considerably long period and usually occupy various resources to maintain a high quality of service (QoS) factor. On the other hand, general big data batch processing workloads are less QoS-sensitive and require massively parallel cloud resources for short period. Despite the elasticity feature of cloud computing, fine-scale characteristics of cloud-based applications may cause temporal low resource utilization in the cloud computing systems, while process-intensive highly utilized workload suffers from performance issues. Therefore, ability of utilization efficient scheduling of heterogeneous workload is one challenging issue for cloud owners. In this paper, addressing the heterogeneity issue impact on low utilization of cloud computing system, conjunct resource allocation scheme of cloud applications and processing jobs is presented to enhance the cloud utilization. The main idea behind this paper is to apply processing jobs and cloud applications jointly in a preemptive way. However, utilization efficient resource allocation requires exact modeling of workloads. So, first, a novel methodology to model the processing jobs and other cloud applications is proposed. Such jobs are modeled as a collection of parallel and sequential tasks in a Markovian process. This enables us to analyze and calculate the efficient resources required to serve the tasks. The next step makes use of the proposed model to develop a preemptive scheduling algorithm for the processing jobs in order to improve resource utilization and its associated costs in the cloud computing system. Accordingly, a preemption-based resource allocation architecture is proposed to effectively and efficiently utilize the idle reserved resources for the processing jobs in the cloud paradigms. Then, performance metrics such as service time for the processing jobs are investigated. The accuracy of the proposed analytical model and scheduling analysis is verified through simulations and experimental results. The simulation and experimental results also shed light on the achievable QoS level for the preemptively allocated processing jobs.     

An efficient resource provisioning approach for analyzing cloud workloads: a metaheuristic-based clustering approach

With the recent advancements in Internet-based computing models, the usage of cloud-based applications to facilitate daily activities is significantly increasing and is expected to grow further. Since the submitted workloads by users to use the cloud-based applications are different in terms of quality of service (QoS) metrics, it requires the analysis and identification of these heterogeneous cloud workloads to provide an efficient resource provisioning solution as one of the challenging issues to be addressed. In this study, we present an efficient resource provisioning solution using metaheuristic-based clustering mechanism to analyze cloud workloads. The proposed workload clustering approach used a combination of the genetic algorithm and fuzzy C-means technique to find similar clusters according to the user’s QoS requirements. Then, we used a gray wolf optimizer technique to make an appropriate scaling decision to provide the cloud resources for serving of cloud workloads. Besides, we design an extended framework to show interaction between users, cloud providers, and resource provisioning broker in the workload clustering process. The simulation results obtained under real workloads indicate that the proposed approach is efficient in terms of CPU utilization, elasticity, and the response time compared with the other approaches.

     

Cloud workflow scheduling with hybrid resource provisioning

Resource provisioning strategies are crucial for workflow scheduling problems which are widespread in cloud computing. The main challenge lies in determining the amounts of reserved and on-demand resources to meet users’ requirements. In this paper, we consider the cloud workflow scheduling problem with hybrid resource provisioning to minimize the total renting cost, which is NP-hard and has not been studied yet. An iterative population-based meta-heuristic is developed. According to the shift vectors obtained during the search procedure, timetables are computed quickly. The appropriate amounts of reserved and on-demand resources are determined by an incremental optimization method. The utilization of each resource is balanced in a swaying way, in terms of which the probabilistic matrix is updated for the next iteration. The proposed algorithm is compared with modified existing algorithms for similar problems. Experimental results demonstrate effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed algorithm.     

A cost‐efficient resource provisioning algorithm for DHT‐based cloud storage systems

Personal cloud storage provides users with convenient data access services. Service providers build distributed storage systems by utilizing cloud resources with distributed hash table (DHT), so as to enhance system scalability. Efficient resource provisioning could not only guarantee service performance, but help providers to save cost. However, the interactions among servers in a DHT‐based cloud storage system depend on the routing process, which makes its execution logic more complicated than traditional multi‐tier applications. In addition, production data centers often comprise heterogeneous machines with different capacities. Few studies have fully considered the heterogeneity of cloud resources, which brings new challenges to resource provisioning. To address these challenges, this paper presents a novel resource provisioning model for service providers. The model utilizes queuing network for analysis of both service performance and cost estimation. Then, the problem is defined as a cost optimization with performance constraints. We propose a cost‐efficient algorithm to decompose the original problem into a sub‐optimization one. Furthermore, we implement a prototype system on top of an infrastructure platform built with OpenStack. It has been deployed in our campus network. Based on real‐world traces collected from our system and Dropbox, we validate the efficiency of our proposed algorithms by extensive experiments. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

支持随机服务请求的云虚拟机按需物理资源分配方法

本文针对云平台按负载峰值需求配置处理机资源、提供单一的服务应用和资源需求动态变化导致资源利用率低下的问题,采用云虚拟机中心来同时提供多种服务应用.利用灰色波形预测算法对未来时间段内到达虚拟机的服务请求量进行预测,给出兼顾资源需求和服务优先等级的虚拟机服务效用函数,以最大化物理机的服务效用值为目标,为物理机内的各虚拟机动态配置物理资源.通过同类虚拟机间的全局负载均衡和多次物理机内各虚拟机的物理资源再分配,进一步增加服务请求量较大的相应类型的虚拟机的物理资源分配量.最后,给出了虚拟机中心基于灰色波形预测的按需资源分配算法ODRGWF.模拟实验表明所提算法能够有效提高云平台中处理机的资源利用率,对提高用户请求完成率以及服务质量都具有实际意义.     

面向移动云计算的自适应虚拟机调度算法

随着移动云计算的快速发展和应用普及,如何对移动云中心资源进行有效管理同时又降低能耗、确保资源高可用是目前移动云计算数据中心的热点问题之一.本文从CPU、内存、网络带宽和磁盘四个维度,建立了基于多目标优化的虚拟机调度模型VMSM-EUN(Virtual Machine Scheduling Model based on Energy consumption,Utility and minimum Number of servers),将最小化数据中心能耗、最大化数据中心效用以及最小化服务器数量作为调度目标.设计了基于改进粒子群的自适应参数调整的虚拟机调度算法VMSA-IPSO(Virtual Machine Scheduling Algorithm based on Improved Particle Swarm Optimization)来求解该模型.最后通过仿真实验验证了本文提出的调度算法的可行性与有效性.对比实验结果表明,本文设计的基于改进粒子群的自适应虚拟机调度算法在进行虚拟机调度时,能在降低能耗的同时提高数据中心效用.