Virtual Machine Instance Scheduling in IaaS

Clouds
Naylor G. Bachiega, Henrique P. Martins, Roberta
Spolon, Marcos A. Cavenaghi
Departamento de Cincia da Computao
UNESP - Univ Estadual Paulista
Bauru, Brazil

Abstract With steady increase in the use of computers,

problems such as energy demand and space in data centers are
occurring worldwide. Many solutions are being designed to solve
these situations, among them is Cloud Computing, which uses
existing technologies, such as virtualization, trying to solve
problems like energy consumption and space allocation in data
centers or large companies. The cloud is shared by multiple
customers and allows an elastic growth, where new resources
such as hardware or software, can be hired and added anytime in
the platform. In this model, customers pay for the resources they
use and not for all the architecture involved. Therefore, it is
important to determine how efficiently those resources are
distributed in the cloud. This paper aims to propose and develop
a scheduling algorithm for the cloud that could efficiently define
the distribution of resources within the architecture.
KeywordsCloud
Virtualization

Computing;

I.

Scheduling

Algorith;

INTRODUCTION

Cloud Computing is seen as a trend in the current scenario

in almost all organizations. The advantages of using Cloud
Computing are the reduction hardware and maintenance cost,
accessibility, flexibility and a highly automated process in
which the client does not need to concern about software
upgrading [1].
Sabahi [2] defines Cloud Computing as a network
environment based on computational resource sharing. In fact,
clouds are based on the Internet and try to disguise their
complexity for the customers.
II.

CLOUD COMPUTING

The Cloud refers to the hardware and software delivered as

services over the Internet by data centers. Companies that
provide clouds make use of virtualization technologies,
combined with their ability to provide computing resources
through their network infrastructure.
Cloud Computing uses virtualization to create an
environment (cloud), which allocates instances (virtualized
operating systems) according to the available resources
(physical machines). These virtual machine instances are
allocated in accordance with the physical machines that are part
of the cloud environment.

Renata S. Lobato, Aleardo Manacero

Departamento de Cincia da Computao e Estatstica
UNESP - Univ Estadual Paulista
So Jos do Rio Preto, Brazil

A. Classes of Services
According to Buyya [3], Cloud Computing is divided into
three service classes according to the type of services offered
by providers: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Software as a
Service (SaaS) and Platform as a Service (Paas ):
Software as a Service (SaaS): in this class, the
applications reside on top of the model, offering
"software on demand". The applications are accessible
from various devices such as a Web browser (e.g.:
webmail). The customer does not manage or control the
cloud infrastructure, such as network, servers, operating
systems, storage, or even the application. The collection
for the service, in this case, can be based on the number
of users [4].
Platform as a Service (PaaS): provides an
environment for developers to build, test and deploy
their applications, not caring about the infrastructure,
amount of memory or hardware requirements. One
example of this class is Google Apps service, where it is
offered a scalable environment for developing and
hosting Web applications or Microsoft Azure [4].
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): in this class of
service, the customer has the availability of cloud
processing, networking, storage, and other computing
resources, where he can install operating systems or any
other system. The customer does not manage or control
the underlying cloud infrastructure and pay only for the
structure used. As examples, it can be mentioned IaaS
services such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
(Amazon EC2), Amazon Simple Storage Service
(Amazon S3), Eucalyptus, OpenNebula and OpenStack
[4].
Besides the three types of services mentioned above, other
authors also consider: CaaS (Communications as a Service),
DaaS (Datacenter as a Service), Kaas (Knowledge as a Service)
and HAAS (Hardware as a Service) [5].
B. Benefits from Cloud Computing
The main benefit brought with the use of Cloud Computing
is scalability. Servers that are not being used represent

problems with management and energy consumption. Full load

and low load servers use almost the same amount of electricity,
so servers which are not being used are not viable. With the
resource provisioning provided by the cloud, based on demand,
it is easier to scale the system, introducing more resources
when they are needed. This allows for reduction in power
consumption and management effort, optimizing the use of
servers, network and storage space. The economics of clouds
involve the following aspects [6]:
Economy of scale from the providers view: it is
achieved from big datacenters, minimizing operating
costs related to power consumption, personnel, and
management. The minimization is a direct result of the
assembly of multiple resources in a single domain.
Economy of scale from the demand view: occurs due
to the demand aggregation, reducing inefficiencies
resulting from load variations, increasing server's load.
Economy of scale from the multitenancy view: since
the degree of sharing can be increased, it is possible to
reduce the cost of management of servers.
III.

Free ability to read/write secondary memory;

Free upstream and downstream capacity of the network.
A major problem of scheduling is to determine the cost of a
task. The cloud has the same problem of how to determine the
cost of processing, disk, memory and a virtual machine
instance network before information can be staggered. In such
cases it is necessary to use an adaptive scheme, in which the
algorithms and parameters used for scheduling decisions
dynamically change according to the state of the previous,
current and/or future feature [7].
As it can be seen in Figure 1, the grid computing which is,
in a way, similar to the one of the cloud, the adaptive
scheduling is realized with a focus on resource heterogeneity of
candidates, the dynamic performance of resources and the
diversity of applications [7]:
Adaptive
scheduling

Adaptation
Resources

Adaptation of Dynamic
Performance

SCHEDULING ON THE CLOUD

One of the most challenging problems in parallel and

distributed computing is known as the scheduling problem. The
goal of scheduling is to determine an assignment of tasks to
processing units in order to optimize certain performance
indices [9]. It should be noted that there are two kinds of
scheduling within the architecture:
Scheduler Manager: the scheduling algorithms work
in order to scale virtual machine instances for
computing nodes, responsible for the processing.
Scheduler hypervisor within the computing node:
the scheduling algorithm is present in the operating
system of the physical machine, sharing the processing
of their cases.
The cloud has an infrastructure that includes a scheduler
resource. Differently from an operating system that generally
works with processes of low granularity, the manager of the
cloud works with virtual machine instances, if compared to
processes, it can be said they would be of high granularity.
Thus, the scheduler of the IaaS cloud application works for
allocation of virtual machine instances, which must determine
which node allocates this instance.
Differently from a common process scheduling, cloud
virtual machine instance remains active, consuming resources
or not, until an action (user request or failure
hardware/software) interrupts processing. Some items must be
evaluated before the cloud scheduler makes its decision on
which node should allocate a new request for resources such
as:
Free processing capacity of the node;
Amount of total memory available;
Amount of secondary memory available;

Adaptation of
Application
Fig. 1. Taxonomy of scheduling in Grid [7].

According to Casavant [8], an assumption for a good

solution in scheduling can be recognized in cases where a
metric is available for evaluating a solution, this technique can
be used to decrease the time required to find an acceptable
solution (schedule). The factors that determine this approach
include:
Availability of a function to evaluate a solution.
Time needed to evaluate a solution.
Ability to judge according to some metrics the value of
an optimal solution.
Provision of an intelligence mechanism to limit the
space solutions.
As discussed, to a cloud environment, the scheduler needs
to evaluate the conditions of computing nodes (approximate or
heuristic) before allocating the next virtual machine instance
(static scheduling), must select the node with more resources
available, whereas it is not possible to measure accurately the
amount of resources that need new instance (suboptimal),
periodically measure (adaptive) and relocate instances if
necessary (load balancing), to not harm the performance of
other instances present on the node in question.
A. Scheduling Algorithm of OpenSource Clouds
There are several scheduling algorithms used to determine a
better balancing of processing and distribution of resources. In
open-source clouds, the main algorithms are deterministic,

using the scores to determine the node that will be used for
processing. This score does not take into account the condition
of resources available in the cloud and it often affects its
performance, as well as the services delivered to the customers
by service providers.
Considering that the current scheduling algorithms of opensource cloud to determine static mode cloud resources, this
study aimed to create a dynamic scheduling algorithm to
determine which computing nodes within a cloud, have the
resources to efficiently host new virtual machine instances.
IV.

METHODOLOGY AND TESTING ENVIRONMENT

A cloud was built to have this work developed. As it can be

seen from Figure 2, four computers were used, one of them as a
manager and the others as computing nodes. The management
system OpenStack cloud was used, and it was chosen because
it is open-source, belongs to an active community and has
extensive documentation.

For better observation of the results and to provide more

detailed comparison in the development phase, the algorithm
was tested with two behaviors of virtual machines in an attempt
to simulate a real production environment.
Virtual machines with constant consumption: three
virtual machine images were created with Ubuntu
Server 12.04 operating system that runs in its startup
script that provides a different constant consumption of
resources (processing, memory, network and disk) for
each operating system as in Figure 3.
Virtual
machines
with
variable
resource
consumption: in this model, the startup script provides
a varying consumption with the use of threads that are
initiated randomly.

scheduling

Virtual Infrastructure
Management
Virtual Machine

Fig. 3. Instances of constant consumption.

Assuming that virtual machines can adopt two behaviors

within a cloud: constant resource consumption and variable
resource consumption, an algorithm was developed, as shown
in Figure 4, to create this scenario.

Nodes

Cloud

Fig. 2. Cloud infrastructure.

Table 1 describes the initial state of each node, amount of

memory, network, CPU, number of cores and cache processor
on each physical node.
TABLE I
NODE RESOURCES

Nodes
01
02
03

Network
100 Mbps
100 Mbps
100 Mbps

Process begins with 1 to

10 threads

The process
restarts when the
subthreads are
enclosed.

Memory CPU Mhz Cores

4 GB
2000
4
4 GB
2000
4
4 GB
2000
4

Table 2 shows the initial state of the nodes in relation to the

resources available before scheduling testing.

Multiple
processes

CPU usage

CPU

Network

Memory

Disk

01

99.7 %

100 %

91 %

100 %

02

99.8 %

100 %

91.2 %

100 %

03

99.8 %

100 %

90 %

100 %

Each subthread
starts with 1 to 3
procedures (Disk,
CPU and network)

Each procedure
starts with a random
life time.

The procedure loops until its

time to finalize random life.

TABLE II
AVAILABLE RESOURCES

Nodes

Start
Process

Network
usage

Fig. 4. Simulation consumption script.

Disk usage

Initially the script starts 1-10 threads and each of these

threads start 1-3 new threads containing a specific
consumption: CPU, disk and network. Note that the memory is
not inserted in the script, as when a virtual machine instance is
loaded, the KVM removes the portion of memory available and
allocates the physical machine to the virtual machine.
V.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

A. Tests with standard scheduling algorithm of OpenStack

To start the test, thirty virtual machine instances were
launched using a script that selects instances randomly from 1
to 3 with different loads, but constant.
As it can be seen from Figure 5, node 1 has more resources
available, but node 2 received 10 instances, overloading it more
than the others.

The second should select the node with more resources

at the time of instantiation of any virtual machine.
Thus, the algorithm should monitor the amount of free
resources on each node of the private cloud, should create an
index for the manager, which may contain the nodes with more
resources available and should also scale the nodes with more
resources, as well as new requests of virtual machine instances.
It should be noted that, in open-source managers, this selection
is done manually by the user.
1) Node Resources
A program that monitors, in predefined time intervals, the
amount of resources of each node was created. The program is
written in Python, to be the same language used by OpenStack
and is present in each node of the cloud.
To monitor the amount of available resources on the node,
a library of Python, called PSUTIL was used. This library
contains functions that evaluate the use of resources such as
CPU, memory, network, disk. In the specific case of the disk,
to determine its speed, a test is made to read and write to
calculate transfer rates.
The algorithm was scheduled to collect machine
information and store it in a database. It was scheduled to run
every five minutes, and that time was based on uptime
command, found in Unix and Linux systems, which checks the
load processes in these systems. This algorithm has three
important functions:

Fig. 5. Test Release: instances of constant consumption.

After that, eight variable instances consumption launches

were made and measurements were carried out for the first ten
minutes, twenty minutes, thirty minutes and one hour, as it is
shown in Figure 6:

resources: this function is performed only once and

through performance analysis, which determines the
maximum data transfer capacity of the disk and the
network, number of cores in the processor, memory and
processing available.
check_node: this function is executed every five
minutes, storing on a database the amount of resources
available for that node.
check_instance: this function is executed every five
minutes, storing on a database the amount of resources
consumed by each instance.

Fig. 6. Test Release: instances of variable consumption.

There were variations in resource consumption, but these

changes followed a pattern. This happened because the
hypervisor present in the node scheduler has its own system of
load balancing, balancing resources among active VMs,
making it possible to specify by an average, the quantity of
available node resources.
B. Prototype
The algorithm prototype consists of two parts:
The first must constantly evaluate the free resources of
each node and save the information in a database.

2) Choice Node
The second algorithm is present in the manager. This
should capture all the records present in the database with the
information of resources for each node, analyses them and
score them. For this, the algorithm evaluates the records of the
conditions for the last 24 hours of an active node, taking into
consideration that this is only a prototype and future revisions
may take into account the behavior parameterization of the
nodes using neural networks or other dynamic algorithms.
To determine the node with more features, it is taken into
consideration a simple average of the records and weights are
applied on resources that may influence the performance of a
virtual machine. In this test, higher weights were prioritized for
CPU and memory.
Based on the results, the algorithm chooses the node with
more resources available before launching the virtual machine
instance. As it is shown in Figure 7, the prototype could

distribute the load among the nodes participating in the

network more evenly than the current algorithm of the
OpenStack cloud.

possible to determine at least two policies for scheduling

requests for virtual machine instances that justify the use of
Cloud Computing:

So, it is extremely necessary to receive feedback from each

participant from the cloud, demonstrating their real capacity of
available resources. For instances of constant consumption, the
prototype achieved its goal when it distributed the resources in
an equated way among the instances.

To distribute the load among the nodes of the cloud,

thereby improving the quality of service provided;
To allocate the maximum instances for a node until its
exhaustion of resources by turning off unused nodes.
Therefore, this prototype has shown that feedback
processes that perform the VM instances is essential to
determine with some precision the resource capacity of each
node participating in the cloud, making it possible for a
manager to decide which policy for operation of the
architecture will be used, to be chosen among quality of service
and/or energy savings:
Quality of service: to ensure the availability of the
service to a client, allocating the resources between
nodes without overloading a particular specific node;
Energy savings: it makes possible the large data centers,
to monitor and to allocate the correct amount of
instances per node, disabling nodes that are inactive,
reducing energy consumption and the amount of carbon
dioxide released into the atmosphere.

Fig. 7. Results of instances of constant consumption.

As one of the approaches to the use of Cloud Computing is

the reduction in energy consumption, the prototype could also
be used to allocate the maximum possible instances on a single
node, allowing the manager to hibernate nodes not used,
without compromising the performance of the virtualized
operating system.
As in the constant consumption, the prototype worked with
instances of variable consumption (Figure 8), because it
evaluates the condition of the nodes before scheduling
application for VM. In the case of instances of variable
consumption, future improvements of this algorithm could
migrate instances of overloaded nodes and monitor these nodes
after migration.

Thus, it is concluded that Cloud Computing provides great

benefits, among the major energy consumption, physical space
savings in data centers, easy sizing provisions, APIs for
external interface, among others. However, determining how
resources will be provisioned into the cloud is of utmost
importance to ensure its success and adoption by large
companies.
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Fig. 8. Results of instances of variable consumption.

In open-source clouds, the main algorithms are

deterministic, using the scores to determine the node that will
be used for processing. This score does not take into account
the condition of resources available in the cloud and it can
hinder the performance of the architecture and affect the
services delivered to the customers by service providers.
The results in this paper show that instances that behave
like processes in the operational system, such as the KVM
hypervisor, allow the analysis and record of consumed
resources, as well as the calculation of the amount of resources
available for each node of the cloud. With this information, it is

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