SKYLINE: Migration of Virtual Machines to End User Terminals for Performance Optimization and Better Resource Utilization

Abstract

Cloud computing is a vastly moving trend in the modern IT infrastructure. Most of the modern organizations are using thin-clients to make use of the cloud computing infrastructure. In doing so they are removing the general purpose computers from their networks. But these computers have a great processing power intrinsic to them and have the potential to integrate themselves into cloud computing environment to extend it. This research explores the possibility of extending the cloud computing environment to the general purpose PCs that are existing in the network. By allowing the virtual machine instance to execute inside a computer which has high resources would certainly increase the performance and also the responsiveness. And once the user is done working on the instance, he/she can then safely transfer the virtual machine back to the server which could be accessed later. Also, the user must have a clear understanding of the network congestion, speed , the bandwidth as well as the machine con gurations of the host computer. SKYLINE is a mechanism which allows the migration of virtual machines to end user terminals based on network and host machine performance evaluation for better resource utilization. The system consists of a client application and a cloud module and relies on a distributed network for le transfer. The client application is responsible for the assessment of the network performance and machine con guration and decides upon whether it is bene cial for a successful migration. If the migration is not possible or bene cial, the client application will prompt the user to user extended GUI of the virtual machine loaded in the server. The cloud component is responsible for the storage and distribution of the virtual machine instances and also for delegating the GUI to the remote client in cases where the client requests such action. Hence SKYLINE integrates the novel user experience in the Cloud Computing environment with the user experience in conventional computing. In doing so, SKYLINE successfully makes better resource utilization of the general purpose computers in a cloud environment and optimizes the performance of the intended task of the user.