An overview of virtual machine placement schemes in cloud computing

In cloud computing, Virtual Machine (VM) placement is a critical operation which is conducted as part of the VM migration and aimed to find the best Physical Machine (PM) to host the VMs. It has a direct effect on the performance, resource utilization and power consumption of the data centers and can reduce the maintenance cost of the data centers for cloud providers. Numerous VM placement schemes are designed and proposed for VM placement in the cloud computing environment aimed to improve various factors affecting the data centers, the VMs and their executions. This article provides a complete survey and analyses of the existing state of the art VM placement schemes proposed in the literature for the cloud computing and data centers. Furthermore, it classifies the VM placement schemes based on the type of the placement algorithm and assesses their capabilities and objectives. Moreover, the properties, advantages and limitations of the VM placement schemes are compared. Finally, the concluding remarks and future research directions are provided. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd.