vMerger: Server Consolidation in Virtualized Environment

In virtualized clusters, applications are deployed in virtual machines (VMs). Resource can be configured dynamically with the varying workloads. When workloads become low, applications can be consolidated on smaller number of nodes. Much more tasks can be processed in clusters. Virtualized clusters have better scalability than traditional clusters. In this paper, we present a server consolidation manager vMerger to improve the scalability of clusters. Linear programming is used for finding new mapping of VMs to smaller number of nodes. An optimized topological-sorting-based migration order generation method is designed to change VM distribution from current mapping to new mapping. The experimental results show that, vMerger effectively improves the scalability of clusters using server consolidation.