Application-Aware Migration Algorithm With Prefetching in Heterogeneous Cloud Environments

Inappropriate service migrations can lead to undesirable situations, such as high traffic overhead, long service latency, and service disruption. In this article, we propose an application-aware migration algorithm (AMA) with prefetching. In AMA, a mobile device sends a service offloading request to the controller. After receiving this request, the controller determines the initial service cloud where virtual machine (VM) of the service initially operates by considering the application type. In addition, it periodically decides where to migrate VM and prefetch its core part considering the mobility of the mobile device and application type. To minimize the generated traffic volume while satisfying the requirements of the application, a constrained Markov decision process (CMDP) is formulated and its optimal policy is obtained via linear programming. Evaluation results demonstrate that AMA with the optimal policy can reduce the generated traffic volume while satisfying the requirements of the application (i.e., service latency and probability of service disruption).