Distributed Cloud Computing Environment Enhanced with Capabilities for Wide-Area Migration and Replication of Virtual Machines

TL;DR

This paper presents a distributed cloud environment that enables wide-area migration and replication of virtual machines using an overlay network of smart routers, improving response times for geographically dispersed users.

Contribution

It introduces a novel wide-area migration and replication mechanism for virtual machines leveraging an overlay network of smart routers, extending beyond traditional subnet limitations.

Findings

Effective virtual machine migration over wide-area networks demonstrated

Overlay network approach improves response times for distributed users

Compared favorably with existing migration and replication methods

Abstract

When a network application is implmented as a virtual machine on a cloud and is used by a large number of users, the location of the virtual machine should be selected carefully so that the response time experienced by users is minimized. As the user population moves and/or increases, the virtual machine may need to be migrated to a new location or replicated on many locations over a wide-area network. Virtual machine migration and replication have been studied extensively but in most cases are limited within a subnetwork to be able to maintain service continuity. In this paper we introduce a distributed cloud computing environment which facilitates the migration and replication of a virtual machine over a wide area network. The mechanism is provided by an overlay network of smart routers, each of which connects a cooperating data center to the Internet. The proposed approach is analyzed and compared with related works