Joint network embedding and server consolidation for energy–efficient dynamic data center virtualization

Cloud computing has emerged in recent years as a promising paradigm that facilitates such new service models as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). As the number of cloud service provider increases, there exists a demand to dynamically provision virtual data centers (VDC) on top of the infrastructure provider's physical data centers. This research addresses problems related to energy and resource efficiently embedding virtual data centers inside physical data centers under dynamic resource allocation conditions, in which VDCs continuously join and leave the system. Dynamic VDC embedding is challenging as it is an NP-hard problem that should meet multiple objectives. In this article, we propose heuristic joint VDC embedding – server consolidation approaches as one solution for that problem. Evaluation results show that the joint approach outperforms existing ones in terms of resource and energy efficiency and can keep system complexity acceptable. © 2017 Elsevier B.V.