Server Consolidation with Minimal SLA Violations

Cloud computing is very promising technology to deliver computing resources like infrastructure (IaaS), platform (PaaS), software (SaaS) etc. in form of services over the Internet. Server consolidation is the mechanism to minimize active (running) physical servers in the data center of cloud service provider. Consolidation helps the service provider to make efficient usage data center resources and in turn to minimize running cost of data center. Users have to pay as per service usage. SLA is like contract between cloud service provider and users. Service Level Agreement (SLA) is the mechanism of providing guaranteed services to cloud users. SLA Violation may cause high penalties to service provider. In this paper it is shown that if consolidation is maximized, it may cause more number of SLA violation. A balanced approach of server consolidation with minimal SLA violations is suggested in this paper.