A survey of data center consolidation in cloud computing systems

Virtualization technology is the backbone of cloud systems, the fastest-growing energy consumers, globally. It holds an imperative position in the resource management area by providing solutions for many related critical problems and challenges. Resource consolidation remains one of the techniques most used to develop new and more efficient resource management policies. Virtual machine packing, which is mainly addressed, allows cloud data centers to move from a particular state to a more optimized one. Currently, the unprecedented advancements in container-based cloud and containerized workloads have created new consolidation opportunities. In this article, we study the problem of consolidating data centers within distributed cloud systems. We give a generic view on IT consolidation at different levels of cloud services. Firstly, we present an overview of virtualized data centers and consolidation. Next, we present a brief thematic taxonomy and an illustration of some consolidation solutions from the literature. This presentation will then be followed by a discussion of certain research questions as well as a proposal for a certain number of future orientations in this field which we assume essential in order to contribute to the resolution of the problematic dealt with in this article. (C) 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Automated summary

Virtualization technology plays a crucial role in cloud systems, providing solutions for key problems in resource management. Resource consolidation is a major technique used to develop more efficient management policies.