A Strategy Game System for QoS-Efficient Dynamic Virtual Machine Consolidation in Data Centers

In this paper, we develop a model for the competitive relationship between cloud service providers and cloud brokers during the virtual machine (VM) placement. The model adopts the idea of a strategy game, in which the cloud service provider and all VMs are participants. First, we define the strategy for the participants in the strategy game model according to the difference between the number of physical resources provided by the provider, and that requested for the VMs by the brokers. Next, payment values between the providers and brokers are obtained from each strategy in the game matrix, which corresponds to the strategy set of VM placement. In addition, the Nash equilibrium solution of the current strategy game demonstrates the trade-off between reducing energy consumption and guaranteeing QoS. On the basis of this, the optimal VM placement scheme is obtained, and the ongoing VM consolidation is examined. Finally, a strategy-game-based VM consolidation (SG-VMC) method is proposed. The extensive experimental results show that the proposed SG-VMC method can significantly reduce energy consumption while guaranteeing QoS.