A review of metaheuristic scheduling techniques in cloud computing

A task scheduling algorithm with deadline constraints for distributed clouds in smart cities

Computing technologies and 5G are helpful for the development of smart cities. Cloud computing has become an essential smart city technology. With artificial intelligence technologies, it can be used to integrate data from various devices, such as sensors and cameras, over the network in a smart city for management of the infrastructure and processing of Internet of Things (IoT) data. Cloud computing platforms provide services to users. Task scheduling in the cloud environment is an important technology to shorten computing time and reduce user cost, and thus has many important applications. Recently, a hierarchical distributed cloud service network model for the smart city has been proposed where distributed (micro) clouds, and core clouds are considered to achieve a better network architecture. Task scheduling in the model has attracted many researchers. In this article, we study a task scheduling problem with deadline constraints in the distributed cloud model and aim to reduce the communication network's data load and provide low-latency services from the cloud server in the local area, hence promoting the efficiency of cloud computing services for local users. To solve the task scheduling problem efficiently, we present an efficient local search algorithm to solve the problem. In the algorithm, a greedy search strategy is proposed to improve the current solutions iteratively. Moreover, randomized methods are used in selecting tasks and virtual machines for reassigning tasks. We carried out extensive computational experiments to evaluate the performance of our algorithm and compared experimental results with Swarm-based approaches, such as GA and PSO. The comparative results show that the proposed local search algorithm performs better than the comparative algorithms on the task scheduling problem.

Improved Jellyfish Algorithm-based multi-aspect task scheduling model for IoT tasks over fog integrated cloud environment

Corporations and enterprises creating IoT-based systems frequently use fog computing integrated with cloud computing to harness the benefits offered by both. These computing paradigms use virtualization and a pay-as-you-go strategy to provide IT resources, including CPU, memory, network and storage. Resource management in such a hybrid environment becomes a challenging task. This problem is exacerbated in the IoT environment, as it generates deadline-driven and heterogeneous data demanding real-time processing. This work proposes an efficient two-step scheduling algorithm comprising a Bi-factor classification task phase based on deadline and priority and a scheduling phase using an enhanced artificial Jellyfish Search Optimizer (JS) proposed as an Improved Jellyfish Algorithm (IJFA). The model considers a variety of cloud and fog resource parameters, including speed, capacity, task size, number of tasks, and number of virtual machines for resource provisioning in a fog integrated cloud environment. The model has been tested for the real-time task scenario with the number of tasks considering both the smaller workload and the relatively higher workload scenario matching the real-time situation. The model addresses the Quality of Service (QoS) parameters of minimizing the batch’s make-span time, lowering the batch execution costs, and increasing the resource utilization. Simulation results prove the effectiveness of the proposed model.

Fault aware intelligent resource allocation using Big Bang-Big Crunch trained neural network for cloud infrastructure

This Ongoing COVID-19 epidemic situation, which has resulted in the loss of lives and economics. In this scenario, social distancing is the only way to prevent ourselves. In such a scenario to boost the economy, a globally large number of industries and businesses have shifted their system to cloud-like education, shipping, training and many more globally. To support this transition cloud services are the only solution to provide reliable and secure services to the user to sustain their business. Due to this, the load over the existing cloud infrastructure has drastically increased. So it is the responsibility of the cloud to manage the load over the existing infrastructure to maintain reliability and serve high-quality services to the user. Task allocation in the cloud is one of the key features to optimize the performance of cloud infrastructure. In this work, we have proposed a prediction-based technique using a pre-trained neural network to find a reliable resource for a task based on previous training and history of cloud and its performance to optimize the performance under the overloaded and under loaded situation. The main aim of this work is to reduce the fault and provide high performance by reducing scheduling time, execution time and network load. The proposed model uses the Big Bang Big Crunch algorithm to generated huge datasets for training our neural model. The accuracy of the BB-BC-ANN model is improved with 98% accuracy.

Hybrid Big Bang-Big Crunch based resource scheduling to improve QoS in cloud infrastructure

The service-oriented computing paradigm changes the way of computing. Emerging technologies like grid computing, cloud computing, and smart health care application have changed the way we compute and communicate. Cloud computing has made computing huge data on the fly and uses flexible resources according to the requirement for real-time applications. Cloud computing comes with pay per use model to pay for only those resources that you have used. Inside the cloud there lie many issues related to efficient and cost-effective models to improve cloud performance and complete the client task with the least cost and high performance. E-Health care services are one of the most computational intensive services in the cloud, they require real-time computing which can only be achieved if the computational resources can compute it in the least time. Cloud can accomplish this using an efficient scheduling algorithm. This manuscript focuses on the task scheduling technique which enhances the performance in real-time with the least execution time, network cost, and execution cost. The presented model is inspired by Big Bang-Big Crunch algorithm in astronomy. The presented algorithm enhances the quality of service by reducing the scheduling delay, network delay with the least resource cost to complete the task in the least cost to the user with high quality of service.

Metaheuristic algorithms for PID controller parameters tuning: review, approaches and open problems

The simplicity, transparency, reliability, high efficiency and robust nature of PID controllers are some of the reasons for their high popularity and acceptance for control in process industries around the world today. Tuning of PID control parameters has been a field of active research and still is. The primary objectives of PID control parameters are to achieve minimal overshoot in steady state response and lesser settling time. With exception of two popular conventional tuning strategies (Ziegler Nichols closed loop oscillation and Cohen-Coon's process reaction curve) several other methods have been employed for tuning. This work accords a thorough review of state-of-the-art and classical strategies for PID controller parameters tuning using metaheuristic algorithms. Methods appraised are categorized into classical and metaheuristic optimization methods for PID parameters tuning purposes. Details of some metaheuristic algorithms, methods of application, equations and implementation flowcharts/algorithms are presented. Some open problems for future research are also presented. The major goal of this work is to proffer a comprehensive reference source for researchers and scholars working on PID controllers.

Knowledge Graph and GNN-Based News Recommendation Algorithm With Edge Computing Support

The current news information from different media websites has posed a serious problem, i.e., it is very difficult to obtain the satisfactory news contents from the measured data information. There have been some researches on news recommendation to improve the experience of users. In spite of this, they always need the further improvement because the news information has showed the explosive increasing way. Therefore, this paper studies knowledge graph and graph neural network (GNN) based news recommendation algorithm with edge computing consideration. At first, the knowledge graph is used for the knowledge extraction. Then, GNN is used to train the extracted features to complete the news recommendation algorithm. Finally, the edge computing is used to offload the high volumes of traffic to the edge server for the news recommendation computation. Compared with two baselines, the proposed algorithm is more efficient, increasing accuracy rate by 2.73% and 9.94% respectively, and decreasing response time by 84.27% and 87.58 respectively.

Look-ahead energy efficient VM allocation approach for data centers

Energy efficiency is an important issue for reducing environmental dissipation. Energy efficient resource provisioning in cloud environments is a challenging problem because of its dynamic nature and varied application workload characteristics. In the literature, live migration of virtual machines (VMs) among servers is commonly proposed to reduce energy consumption and to optimize resource usage, although it comes with essential drawbacks, such as migration cost and performance degradation. Energy efficient provisioning is addressed at the data center level in this research. A novel efficient resource management algorithm for virtualized data centers that optimizes the number of servers to meet the requirements of dynamic workloads without migration is proposed in this paper. The proposed approach, named Look-ahead Energy Efficient VM Allocation (LAA), contains a Holt Winters-based prediction module. Energy efficiency and performance are inversely proportional. The energy-performance trade-off relies on periodic comparisons of the predicted and active numbers of servers. To evaluate the proposed algorithm, experiments are conducted with real-world workload traces from Google Cluster. LAA is compared with the best approach provided by CloudSim based on VM migration called Local Regression-Minimum Migration Time (LR-MMT). The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm leads to a consumption reduction of up to 45% to complete one workload compared with the LR-MMT.

Solving Task Scheduling Problem in the Cloud Using a Hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization Approach

Synergistic confluence of pervasive sensing, computing, and networking is generating heterogeneous data at unprecedented scale and complexity. Cloud computing has emergered in the last two decades as a unique storage and computing resource to support a diverse assortment of applications. Numerous organizations are migrating to the cloud to store and process their information. When the cloud infrastructures and resources are insufficient to satisfy end-users requests, scheduling mechanisms are required. Task scheduling, especially in a distributed and heterogeneous system is an NP-hard problem since various task parameters must be considered for an appropriate scheduling. In this paper we propose a hybrid PSO and extremal optimization-based approach to resolve task scheduling in the cloud. The algorithm optimizes makespan which is an important criterion to schedule a number of tasks on different Virtual Machines. Experiments on synthetic and real-life workloads show the capability of the method to successfully schedule task and outperforms many known methods of the state of the art.

Binary Self-Adaptive Salp Swarm Optimization based Dynamic Load Balancing in Cloud Computing

In the recent era of cloud computing, the huge demand for virtual resource provisioning requires mitigating the challenges of uniform load distribution as well as efficient resource utilization among the virtual machines in cloud datacenters. Salp swarm optimization is one of the simplest, yet efficient metaheuristic techniques to balance the load among the VMs. The proposed methodology has incorporated self-adaptive procedures to deal with the unpredictable population of the tasks being executed in cloud datacenters. Moreover, a sigmoid transfer function has been integrated to solve the discrete problem of tasks assigned to the appropriate VMs. Thus, the proposed algorithm binary self-adaptive salp swarm optimization has been simulated and compared with some of the recent metaheuristic approaches, like BSO, MPSO, and SSO for conflicting scheduling quality of service parameters. It has been observed from the result analysis that the proposed algorithm outperforms in terms of makespan, response time, and degree of load imbalance while maximizing the resource utilization.

Multi-objective task scheduling in cloud computing environment by hybridized bat algorithm

Cloud computing represents relatively new paradigm of utilizing remote computing resources and is becoming increasingly important and popular technology, that supports on-demand (as needed) resource provisioning and releasing in almost real-time. Task scheduling has a crucial role in cloud computing and it represents one of the most challenging issues from this domain. Therefore, to establish more efficient resource employment, an effective and robust task allocation (scheduling) method is required. By using an efficient task scheduling algorithm, the overall performance and service quality, as well as end-users experience can be improved. As the number of tasks increases, the problem complexity rises as well, which results in a huge search space. This kind of problem belongs to the class of NP-hard optimization challenges. The objective of this paper is to propose an approach that is able to find approximate (near-optimal) solution for multi-objective task scheduling problem in cloud environment, and at the same time to reduce the search time. In the proposed manuscript, we present a swarm-intelligence based approach, the hybridized bat algorithm, for multi-objective task scheduling. We conducted experiments on the CloudSim toolkit using standard parallel workloads and synthetic workloads. The obtained results are compared to other similar, metaheuristic-based techniques that were evaluated under the same conditions. Simulation results prove great potential of our proposed approach in this domain.

A Survey of Swarm Intelligence Based Load Balancing Techniques in Cloud Computing Environment

Cloud computing offers flexible, interactive, and observable access to shared resources on the Internet. It frees users from the requirements of managing computing on their hardware. It enables users to not only store their data and computing over the internet but also can access it whenever and wherever it is required. The frequent use of smart devices has helped cloud computing to realize the need for its rapid growth. As more users are adapting to the cloud environment, the focus has been placed on load balancing. Load balancing allocates tasks or resources to different devices. In cloud computing, and load balancing has played a major role in the efficient usage of resources for the highest performance. This requirement results in the development of algorithms that can optimally assign resources while managing load and improving quality of service (QoS). This paper provides a survey of load balancing algorithms inspired by swarm intelligence (SI). The algorithms considered in the discussion are Genetic Algorithm, BAT Algorithm, Ant Colony, Grey Wolf, Artificial Bee Colony, Particle Swarm, Whale, Social Spider, Dragonfly, and Raven roosting Optimization. An analysis of the main objectives, area of applications, and targeted issues of each algorithm (with advancements) is presented. In addition, performance analysis has been performed based on average response time, data center processing time, and other quality parameters.

An efficient population-based multi-objective task scheduling approach in fog computing systems

With the rapid development of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, fog computing has emerged as an extension to the cloud computing that relies on fog nodes with distributed resources at the edge of network. Fog nodes offer computing and storage resources opportunities to resource-less IoT devices which are not capable to support IoT applications with computation-intensive requirements. Furthermore, the closeness of fog nodes to IoT devices satisfies the low-latency requirements of IoT applications. However, due to the high IoT task offloading requests and fog resource limitations, providing an optimal task scheduling solution that considers a number of quality metrics is essential. In this paper, we address the task scheduling problem with the aim of optimizing the time and energy consumption as two QoS parameters in the fog context. First, we present a fog-based architecture for handling the task scheduling requests to provide the optimal solutions. Second, we formulate the task scheduling problem as an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) optimization model considering both time and fog energy consumption. Finally, we propose an advanced approach called Opposition-based Chaotic Whale Optimization Algorithm (OppoCWOA) to enhance the performance of the original WOA for solving the modelled task scheduling problem in a timely manner. The efficiency of the proposed OppoCWOA is shown by providing extensive simulations and comparisons with the original WOA and some existing meta-heuristic algorithms such as Artificial Bee Colony (ABC), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), and Genetic Algorithm (GA).

Task scheduling and resource allocation of seasonal requests of users in cloud using NMKA and CM-GA techniques

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to provide energy-efficient task scheduling and resource allocation (RA) in cloud data centers (CDC).

Design/methodology/approach

Task scheduling and RA is proposed in this paper for cloud environment, which schedules the user’s seasonal requests and allocates resources in an optimized manner. The proposed study does the following operations: data collection, feature extraction, feature reduction and RA. Initially, the online streaming data of seasonal requests of multiple users were gathered. After that, the features are extracted based on user requests along with the cloud server, and the extracted features are lessened using modified principal component analysis. For RA, the split data of the user request is identified and that data is pre-processed by computing closed frequent itemset along with entropy values. After that, the user requests are scheduled using the normalized K-means algorithm (NKMA) centered on the entropy values. Finally, the apt resources are allotted to that scheduled task using the Cauchy mutation-genetic algorithm (CM-GA). The investigational outcomes exhibit that the proposed study outruns other existing algorithms in respect to response time, execution time, clustering accuracy, precision and recall.

Findings

The proposed NKMA and CM-GA technique’s performance is analyzed by comparing them with the existing techniques. The NKMA performance is analyzed with KMA and Fuzzy C-means regarding Prc (Precision), Rca (Recall), F ms (f measure), Acr (Accuracy)and Ct (Clustering Time). The performance is compared to about 500 numbers of tasks. For all tasks, the NKMA provides the highest values for Prc, Rca, Fms and Acr, takes the lowest time (Ct) for clustering the data. Then, the CM-GA optimization for optimally allocating the resource in the cloud is contrasted with the GA and particle swarm optimization with respect to Rt (Response Time), Pt (Process Time), Awt (Average Waiting Time), Atat (Average Turnaround Time), Lcy (Latency) and Tp (Throughput). For all number of tasks, the proposed CM-GA gives the lowest values for Rt, Pt, Awt, Atat and Lcy and also provides the highest values for Tp. So, from the results, it is known that the proposed technique for seasonal requests RA works well and the method optimally allocates the resources in the cloud.

Originality/value

The proposed approach provides energy-efficient task scheduling and RA and it paves the way for the development of effective CDC.

Multi-objective hybrid genetic algorithm for task scheduling problem in cloud computing

The cloud computing systems are sorts of shared collateral structure which has been in demand from its inception. In these systems, clients are able to access existing services based on their needs and without knowing where the service is located and how it is delivered, and only pay for the service used. Like other systems, there are challenges in the cloud computing system. Because of a wide array of clients and the variety of services available in this system, it can be said that the issue of scheduling and, of course, energy consumption is essential challenge of this system. Therefore, it should be properly provided to users, which minimizes both the cost of the provider and consumer and the energy consumption, and this requires the use of an optimal scheduling algorithm. In this paper, we present a two-step hybrid method for scheduling tasks aware of energy and time called Genetic Algorithm and Energy-Conscious Scheduling Heuristic based on the Genetic Algorithm. The first step involves prioritizing tasks, and the second step consists of assigning tasks to the processor. We prioritized tasks and generated primary chromosomes, and used the Energy-Conscious Scheduling Heuristic model, which is an energy-conscious model, to assign tasks to the processor. As the simulation results show, these results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm has been able to outperform other methods.

Multi-objective workflow optimization strategy (MOWOS) for cloud computing

Workflow scheduling involves mapping large tasks onto cloud resources to improve scheduling efficiency. This has attracted the interest of many researchers, who devoted their time and resources to improve the performance of scheduling in cloud computing. However, scientific workflows are big data applications, hence the executions are expensive and time consuming. In order to address this issue, we have extended our previous work ”Cost Optimised Heuristic Algorithm (COHA)” and presented a novel workflow scheduling algorithm named Multi-Objective Workflow Optimization Strategy (MOWOS) to jointly reduce execution cost and execution makespan. MOWOS employs tasks splitting mechanism to split large tasks into sub-tasks to reduce their scheduling length. Moreover, two new algorithms called MaxVM selection and MinVM selection are presented in MOWOS for task allocations. The design purpose of MOWOS is to enable all tasks to successfully meet their deadlines at a reduced time and budget. We have carefully tested the performance of MOWOS with a list of workflow inputs. The simulation results have demonstrated that MOWOS can effectively perform VM allocation and deployment, and well handle incoming streaming tasks with a random arriving rate. The performance of the proposed algorithm increases significantly in large and extra-large workflow tasks than in small and medium workflow tasks when compared to the state-of-art work. It can greatly reduce cost by 8%, minimize makespan by 10% and improve resource utilization by 53%, while also allowing all tasks to meet their deadlines.

A binary Bird Swarm Optimization based load balancing algorithm for cloud computing environment

Task scheduling and load balancing are a concern for service providers in the cloud computing environment. The problem of scheduling tasks and balancing loads in a cloud is categorized under an NP-hard problem. Thus, it needs an efficient load scheduling algorithm that not only allocates the tasks onto appropriate VMs but also maintains the trade-off amidst VMs. It should keep an equilibrium among VMs in a way that reduces the makespan while maximizing the utilization of resources and throughput. In response to it, the authors propose a load balancing algorithm inspired by the mimicking behavior of a flock of birds, which is called the Bird Swarm Optimization Load Balancing (BSO-LB) algorithm that considers tasks as birds and VMs as destination food patches. In the considered cloud simulation environment, tasks are assumed to be independent and non-preemptive. To evaluate the efficacy of the proposed algorithm under real workloads, the authors consider a dataset (GoCJ) logged by Goggle in 2018 for the execution of cloudlets. The proposed algorithm aims to enhance the overall system performance by reducing response time and keeping the whole system balanced. The authors have integrated the binary variant of the BSO algorithm with the load balancing method. The proposed technique is analyzed and compared with other existing load balancing algorithms such as MAX-MIN, RASA, Improved PSO, and other scheduling algorithms as FCFS, SJF, and RR. The experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms when being compared with the different algorithms mentioned above. It is noteworthy that the proposed approach illustrates an improvement in resource utilization and reduces the makespan of tasks.

Performance Modeling of Load Balancing Techniques in Cloud: Some of the Recent Competitive Swarm Artificial Intelligence-based

Cloud computing deals with voluminous heterogeneous data, and there is a need to effectively distribute the load across clusters of nodes to achieve optimal performance in terms of resource usage, throughput, response time, reliability, fault tolerance, and so on. The swarm intelligence methodologies use artificial intelligence to solve computationally challenging problems like load balancing, scheduling, and resource allocation at finite time intervals. In literature, sufficient works are being carried out to address load balancing problem in the cloud using traditional swarm intelligence techniques like ant colony optimization, particle swarm optimization, cuckoo search, bat optimization, and so on. But the traditional swarm intelligence techniques have issues with respect to convergence rate, arriving at the global optimum solution, complexity in implementation and scalability, which limits the applicability of such techniques in cloud domain. In this paper, we look into performance modeling aspects of some of the recent competitive swarm artificial intelligence based techniques like the whale, spider, dragonfly, and raven which are used for load balancing in the cloud. The results and analysis are presented over performance metrics such as total execution time, response time, resource utilization rate, and throughput achieved, and it is found that the performance of the raven roosting algorithm is high compared to other techniques.

A Survey on QoS Requirements Based on Particle Swarm Optimization Scheduling Techniques for Workflow Scheduling in Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is an innovative technology that deploys networks of servers, located in wide remote areas, for performing operations on a large amount of data. In cloud computing, a workflow model is used to represent different scientific and web applications. One of the main issues in this context is scheduling large workflows of tasks with scientific standards on the heterogeneous cloud environment. Other issues are particular to public cloud computing. These include the need for the user to be satisfied with the quality of service (QoS) parameters, such as scalability and reliability, as well as maximize the end-users resource utilization rate. This paper surveys scheduling algorithms based on particle swarm optimization (PSO). This is aimed at assisting users to decide on the most suitable QoS consideration for large workflows in infrastructure as a service (IaaS) cloud applications and mapping tasks to resources. Besides, the scheduling schemes are categorized according to the variant of the PSO algorithm implemented. Their objectives, characteristics, limitations and testing tools have also been highlighted. Finally, further directions for future research are identified.

Modified Migrating Birds Optimization for Energy-Aware Flexible Job Shop Scheduling Problem

In recent decades, workshop scheduling has excessively focused on time-related indicators, while ignoring environmental metrics. With the advent of sustainable manufacturing, the energy-aware scheduling problem has been attracting more and more attention from scholars and researchers. In this study, we investigate an energy-aware flexible job shop scheduling problem to reduce the total energy consumption in the workshop. For the considered problem, the energy consumption model is first built to formulate the energy consumption, such as processing energy consumption, idle energy consumption, setup energy consumption and common energy consumption. Then, a mathematical model is established with the criterion to minimize the total energy consumption. Secondly, a modified migrating birds optimization (MMBO) algorithm is proposed to solve the model. In the proposed MMBO, a population initialization scheme is presented to ensure the initial solutions with a certain quality and diversity. Five neighborhood structures are employed to create neighborhood solutions according to the characteristics of the problem. Furthermore, both a local search method and an aging-based re-initialization mechanism are developed to avoid premature convergence. Finally, the experimental results validate that the proposed algorithm is effective for the problem under study.

Load balancing in cloud computing – A hierarchical taxonomical classification

Load unbalancing problem is a multi-variant, multi-constraint problem that degrades performance and efficiency of computing resources. Load balancing techniques cater the solution for load unbalancing situation for two undesirable facets- overloading and under-loading. In contempt of the importance of load balancing techniques to the best of our knowledge, there is no comprehensive, extensive, systematic and hierarchical classification about the existing load balancing techniques. Further, the factors that cause load unbalancing problem are neither studied nor considered in the literature. This paper presents a detailed encyclopedic review about the load balancing techniques. The advantages and limitations of existing methods are highlighted with crucial challenges being addressed so as to develop efficient load balancing algorithms in future. The paper also suggests new insights towards load balancing in cloud computing.

Resource Scheduling in Cloud Computing Based on a Hybridized Whale Optimization Algorithm

The cloud computing paradigm, as a novel computing resources delivery platform, has significantly impacted society with the concept of on-demand resource utilization through virtualization technology. Virtualization enables the usage of available physical resources in a way that multiple end-users can share the same underlying hardware infrastructure. In cloud computing, due to the expectations of clients, as well as on the providers side, many challenges exist. One of the most important nondeterministic polynomial time (NP) hard challenges in cloud computing is resource scheduling, due to its critical impact on the cloud system performance. Previously conducted research from this domain has shown that metaheuristics can substantially improve cloud system performance if they are used as scheduling algorithms. This paper introduces a hybridized whale optimization algorithm, that falls into the category of swarm intelligence metaheuristics, adapted for tackling the resource scheduling problem in cloud environments. To more precisely evaluate performance of the proposed approach, original whale optimization was also adapted for resource scheduling. Considering the two most important mechanisms of any swarm intelligence algorithm (exploitation and exploration), where the efficiency of a swarm algorithm depends heavily on their adjusted balance, the original whale optimization algorithm was enhanced by addressing its weaknesses of inappropriate exploitation–exploration trade-off adjustments and the premature convergence. The proposed hybrid algorithm was first tested on a standard set of bound-constrained benchmarks with the goal to more accurately evaluate its performance. After, simulations were performed using two different resource scheduling models in cloud computing with real, as well as with artificial data sets. Simulations were performed on the robust CloudSim platform. A hybrid whale optimization algorithm was compared with other state-of-the-art metaheurisitcs and heuristics, as well as with the original whale optimization for all conducted experiments. Achieved results in all simulations indicate that the proposed hybrid whale optimization algorithm, on average, outperforms the original version, as well as other heuristics and metaheuristics. By using the proposed algorithm, improvements in tackling the resource scheduling issue in cloud computing have been established, as well enhancements to the original whale optimization implementation.

Cloudlet Scheduling by Hybridized Monarch Butterfly Optimization Algorithm

Cloud computing technology enables efficient utilization of available physical resources through the virtualization where different clients share the same underlying physical hardware infrastructure. By utilizing the cloud computing concept, distributed, scalable and elastic computing resources are provided to the end-users over high speed computer networks (the Internet). Cloudlet scheduling that has a significant impact on the overall cloud system performance represents one of the most important challenges in this domain. In this paper, we introduce implementations of the original and hybridized monarch butterfly optimization algorithm that belongs to the category of swarm intelligence metaheuristics, adapted for tackling the cloudlet scheduling problem. The hybridized monarch butterfly optimization approach, as well as adaptations of any monarch butterfly optimization version for the cloudlet scheduling problem, could not be found in the literature survey. Both algorithms were implemented within the environment of the CloudSim platform. The proposed hybridized version of the monarch butterfly optimization algorithm was first tested on standard benchmark functions and, after that, the simulations for the cloudlet scheduling problem were performed using artificial and real data sets. Based on the obtained simulation results and the comparative analysis with six other state-of-the-art metaheuristics and heuristics, under the same experimental conditions and tested on the same problem instances, a hybridized version of the monarch butterfly optimization algorithm proved its potential for tackling the cloudlet scheduling problem. It has been established that the proposed hybridized implementation is superior to the original one, and also that the task scheduling problem in cloud environments can be more efficiently solved by using such an algorithm with positive implications to the cloud management.

A Novel Performance Enhancing Task Scheduling Algorithm for Cloud-Based E-Health Environment

The fast-growing internet services have led to the rapid development of storing, retrieving and processing health-related documents from a public cloud. In such a scenario, the performance of cloud services offered is not guaranteed, since it depends on efficient resource scheduling, network bandwidth, etc. The trade-off which lies between the cost and the QoS is that the cost should be variably low on achieving high QoS. This can be done by performance optimization. In order to optimize the performance, a novel task scheduling algorithm is proposed in this article. The main advantage of this proposed scheduling algorithm is to improve the QoS parameters which comprises of metrics such as response time, computation time, availability and cost. The proposed work is simulated in Aneka and shows better performance compared to existing paradigms.

Underwater Robot Task Planning Using Multi-Objective Meta-Heuristics

Robotics deployed in the underwater medium are subject to stringent operational conditions that impose a high degree of criticality on the allocation of resources and the schedule of operations in mission planning. In this context the so-called cost of a mission must be considered as an additional criterion when designing optimal task schedules within the mission at hand. Such a cost can be conceived as the impact of the mission on the robotic resources themselves, which range from the consumption of battery to other negative effects such as mechanic erosion. This manuscript focuses on this issue by devising three heuristic solvers aimed at efficiently scheduling tasks in robotic swarms, which collaborate together to accomplish a mission, and by presenting experimental results obtained over realistic scenarios in the underwater environment. The heuristic techniques resort to a Random-Keys encoding strategy to represent the allocation of robots to tasks and the relative execution order of such tasks within the schedule of certain robots. The obtained results reveal interesting differences in terms of Pareto optimality and spread between the algorithms considered in the benchmark, which are insightful for the selection of a proper task scheduler in real underwater campaigns.

Hybrid Symbiotic Organisms Search Optimization Algorithm for Scheduling of Tasks on Cloud Computing Environment

Cloud computing has attracted significant attention from research community because of rapid migration rate of Information Technology services to its domain. Advances in virtualization technology has made cloud computing very popular as a result of easier deployment of application services. Tasks are submitted to cloud datacenters to be processed on pay as you go fashion. Task scheduling is one the significant research challenges in cloud computing environment. The current formulation of task scheduling problems has been shown to be NP-complete, hence finding the exact solution especially for large problem sizes is intractable. The heterogeneous and dynamic feature of cloud resources makes optimum task scheduling non-trivial. Therefore, efficient task scheduling algorithms are required for optimum resource utilization. Symbiotic Organisms Search (SOS) has been shown to perform competitively with Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). The aim of this study is to optimize task scheduling in cloud computing environment based on a proposed Simulated Annealing (SA) based SOS (SASOS) in order to improve the convergence rate and quality of solution of SOS. The SOS algorithm has a strong global exploration capability and uses fewer parameters. The systematic reasoning ability of SA is employed to find better solutions on local solution regions, hence, adding exploration ability to SOS. Also, a fitness function is proposed which takes into account the utilization level of virtual machines (VMs) which reduced makespan and degree of imbalance among VMs. CloudSim toolkit was used to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed method using both synthetic and standard workload. Results of simulation showed that hybrid SOS performs better than SOS in terms of convergence speed, response time, degree of imbalance, and makespan.