QoS and load balancing in cloud computing-an access for performance enhancement using agent based software

Abstract

Cloud computing, one of the advanced and emerged technologies in the field of computer science has been embraced by different organizations of various sizes. The purpose of organizations moving into cloud is manifold, out of which, performance enhancement and cost optimizer are the primary ones. Generally, when an organization moves their operations into cloud, Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) provision various machine images to different users based on their requirements within the organization. Also, CSPs, potentially offer Anything as a Service (XaaS) to organizations with the help of distributed and connected server farms available at geographically separate locations. QoS parameters in terms of service time, as specified in the Service Level Agreements(SLAs) between CSPs and organizations must be adhered strictly. As an effort towards maintaining QoS, within the cloud, the operational approach of load balancing across multiple distributed servers play a vital role. This paper presents a novel load balancing algorithmic framework with the help of software agent that runs in the gateway system between cloud consumers and cloud service providers. This software agent in the gateway system is vested with the responsibility of diverting the incoming work process to the appropriate servers, based on their current workload and resource utilization. The efficiency of this approach is tested using CLOUDSIM by creating different number of cloudlets and hosts.