Distributed Resource Allocation in Cloud Computing Using Multi-Agent Systems

The Infrastructure-as-a-Service model of cloud computing allocates resources in the form of virtual machines that can be resized and live migrated at runtime. This paper presents a novel distributed resource allocation approach for VM consolidation relying on multi-agent systems. Our approach uses a utility function based on host CPU utilization to drive live migration actions. Experimental results show reduced service level agreement violations and a better overall performance compared to a centralized approach and a threshold-based distributed approach.