Cloud resource management — Virtual machines competing for limited resources

The present-day high-tech feats in data, mobile, wireless and broadband technologies cannot be overemphasized. Cloud computing technology makes it possible to backup, develop and host application design for the internet where information technology (IT) related facilities are provided “as a service”; allowing clients access technology-enabled services more economically and flexibly on a pay-as-you-use basis. This paper underlines effective resource management in Cloud environments. We utilize two Cloud simulations namely CloudSim and CloudAnalyst to analyze the way virtual machines (VMs) are mapped to hosts, the distribution of loads and management of host resources among VMs as well as their behavioural patterns under various deployment configurations. Real-world scenarios are considered and a resource management strategy performed on a personal computer (PC) using activity monitor and VMware fusion running three different operating systems (OSs). Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is used to evaluate and analyze resource consumption via CloudWatch. Results obtained indicate that effective resource management enhances the Quality of Service (QoS) offered by Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) as well as reduces the processing and response times. This effectually reduces the overwhelming cost of consumption; a great benefit to CSPs, and large-scale applications such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.