2012 International Symposium on Cloud and Services Computing
HTV Dynamic Load Balancing Algorithm for Virtual Machine Instances in Cloud
Jitendra Bhatia
Department of Computer Science and engineering
Nirma University
Ahmedabad, India
jitendra.bhatia@nirmauni.ac.in
Harshal Trivedi
Department of Computer Engineering
Venus International Collage of Technology
Ahmedabad, India
harshal2008@gmail.com
Abstract— Cloud computing is defined as a structured model
that defines computing services, in which resources as well as
data are retrieved from cloud service provider via internet
through some well formed web-based tool and application. It
provides the on demand services for various applications and
infrastructure to the user. Cloud service providers are
required to provide the service efficiently and effectively. For
that, a cloud provider utilizes all the resource from the node.
Thus, the node that are meant for creating a task in the cloud
computing must be considered for efficient usage of the
available resources. Resources have to be properly selected
according to the properties of the task. By analyzing the
present research on cloud computing, we have come to the
most common and important issue of load balancing. Load
balancing has always been a research subject whose objective
is to ensure that all computing resources are distributed
efficiently and fairly. As the numbers of users are increasing
on the cloud, the load balancing has become the challenge for
the cloud provider. Load balancing being subject of research,
we have proposed an algorithm for load balancing which will
work dynamically for optimal usage of resource utilization. We
have compared our algorithm with various existing static load
balancers as well as conventional dynamic load balancer also.
Keywords-cloud computing;load Balancing;Scheduling;
Resourece Allocation
I. INTRODUCTION
Cloud computing now a day has became quite popular
among a community cloud of cloud user by offering the
various types of resources.
“Cloud computing defined as such structured model that
defines computing services where resources as well as data
are retrieved from cloud service provider via internet
through some well-formed web-based tool and application”.
In generalized way, it describes how organization take their
existing IT infrastructure and hand over to skilled person
who can precisely build or manage it so that organization
can achieved their goal by focusing on new ways and
techniques that help the business at hand rather than
becoming expert in building servers, managing storage or
protecting data. Some of the most prominent examples of
978-0-7695-4931-6/12 $26.00 © 2012 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ISCOS.2012.25
Tirth Patel
Department of Information Technology
Charusat University
Ahmedabad, India
tirthking@gmail.com
Vishrut Majmudar
Department of Computer Engineering
Gandhinagar Institute of Technology
Ahmedabad, India
v.h.majmudar@gmail.com
cloud provider are Amazon EC2, Google App Engine,
Google apps etc. Developers, on a whole, can obtain the
advantages of a managed computing platform, without
having to commit resources to design, build and maintain
the network. On profound studies, some of the important
problems of cloud were examined, like data security, data
loss, load balancing etc. In cloud platforms, resource
allocation (or load balancing) takes place majority at two
levels.
At first level: When an application is uploaded to the cloud,
the load balancer assigns the requested instances to physical
computers, attempting to balance the computational load of
multiple applications across physical computers.
At second level: When an application receives multiple
incoming requests, each of these requests must be assigned
to a specific application instance to balance the
computational load across a set of instances of the same
application [1].
To understand it in a better way, we would conclude it
with an example: Eucalyptus cloud provider uses the Round
Robin (RR) algorithm for the load balancing. Therefore,
virtualization technology is being comprehensively used in
cloud computing. However, due to the highly dynamic
heterogeneity of resources on cloud computing platform,
virtual machines must adapt the cloud computing
environment dynamically so as to achieve its best
performance by efficiently using its service and resources.
But in order to improve resource utility, resources must be
properly allocated and load balancing must be guaranteed
[2]. Therefore, Load balancing has always been a research
subject whose objective is to ensure that all computing
resource are distributed efficiently and fairly and at a good
end can improves resource utility.
In cloud computing, if more load will be consigned on
nodes of cloud then the increase in the number of users will
lead to poor performance in terms of resource usage, if the
cloud provider is not configured with any good mechanism
for load balancing and also the capacity of cloud servers
would not be utilized properly. This will confiscate or seize
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the performance of heavy loaded node. If some good load
balancing technique is implemented, it will equally divide
the load (here term equally defines low load on heavy
loaded node and more load on node with less load now) and
thereby we can maximize resource utilization.
II. RELEATED WORK
Now a day’s every organization are propagating towards
the use of cloud computing. With no doubt we can put it as
within few years, there will be lots of user for cloud
computing. During that period of time, cloud provider will
need to maintain more effective load balancing and an
efficient resource management than the current scenario.
And it is of no worth to buy new hardware just to balance
the load instead of fully utilizing current resources. Thus, an
efficient load balancing system is needed to handle much
load and to maximize utilization of current resources.
There are several static and dynamic type of load
balancing algorithms on which various researches have been
made. Static scheduling algorithm like ISH [3], MCP [4]
and ETF [5] which are based on BNP are suitable for small
distributed environments with high Internet speed ignoring
the communication delay. While MH[6] and DSL[7]
algorithm which are based on APN takes communication
delay and execution time into consideration and are suitable
for larger distributed environments. In dynamic scheduling
algorithm, some algorithms guarantee the load balancing
and load sharing through self-adapting and intelligent
distribution. In mixed scheduling algorithm, it mainly
emphasizes on equal distribution of assigned computing
task by reducing the communication cost of distributed
computing nodes and at the same time it realizes balanced
scheduling according to the computing volume of every
node. Researchers have also conducted studies on
algorithms of autonomic scheduling, central scheduling,
intelligent scheduling and agent negotiated scheduling.
There are many similarities as well as differences between
traditional scheduling algorithms and the scheduling of VM
resources in cloud computing environment. First of all the
major difference between cloud computing environment and
traditional computing environment is the target of
scheduling. In traditional computing environment, it mainly
schedules process or task so the granularity and the
transferred data is small; whereas in cloud computing
environment, the scheduling target is VM resources so the
granularity is large and the transferred data is large as well.
Secondly, in cloud computing environment, compared with
the deployment time of VMs, the time of scheduling
algorithm can almost be neglected. The other load balancing
algorithm like random scheduling method randomly
distributes load across the available servers, picking up one
via random number generation and sending the current
connection to it. While it is available on many load
balancing products, its utility is questionable except where
uptime is concerned – and then only we can detect down
machines. The problem with this strategy is the load that is
distributed among the nodes but there is no guaranties that
load will be distributed equally. In Round Robin (RR), it
passes each new connection request to the next server in
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queue, eventually distributing connections evenly across the
array of machines being load balanced. Round Robin works
well in most configurations, but could be more effective if
the equipment that we are load balancing is roughly equal in
processing speed, connection speed, and/or memory. The
basic purpose of working behind the algorithm is the system
builds a standard circular queue and walks through it,
sending one request to each machine before getting to the
start of the queue and repeating it again. The problem with
this strategy is that it will not check whether the server is
heavy loaded or not, it will directly assign the request
whenever its turn comes so that is the reason, some server
are heavy loaded while some are lightly loaded [8]. In
Dynamic Round Robin, strategy, weights assignments is
based on continuous monitoring of the servers and is
therefore constantly changing. In this dynamic load
balancing strategy, distributions of connections is done on
the basis of server performance analysis such as the current
number of instances i.e. connection per node or the response
time of a fastest node. This type of an application level
connection distribution controlling method is rarely
available in a conventional load balancer. In Weighted
Round Robin, the circular queue is rebuilt with new
(dynamic) weights whenever it has been fully traversed [8].
ARA(Adaptive Resource Allocation):In ARA algorithm
for adaptive resource allocation in cloud systems, which
attempts to counteract the deleterious effect of burrstones by
allowing some randomness in the decision making process
and thus improve overall system performance and
availability [1]. The problem with this strategy is that it only
considers the Poisson arrival streams as well as the
exponentially distributed service time and the fixed number
of choice.
Equally spread current execution: In this algorithm,
processes are handled with priorities. It distribute the load
randomly by checking the size and transfer the load to that
virtual machine which is lightly loaded or handle that task
easily and take less time by giving maximum throughput. It
is spread spectrum technique in which the load balancer
spread the load of the job in hand into multiple virtual
machines.
Throttled: This algorithm is completely based on virtual
machine in which, the client first requests the load balancer
to find a suitable Virtual Machine (VM) which access that
loads easily and perform the required operation. The major
issue in this allocation is that, it does not consider the
advanced load balancing requirements such as processing
times for each individual requests.
 TABLE I. COMPARATIVE CHART FOR EXISTING AND PROPOSED ALGORITHM therefore it will degrade the performance and efficiency of
that heavy loaded nodes.
Parameter Round Throttled Active HTV In cloud computing, the load is transferred to the number
robin Vmload
Balancer of nodes using Round Robin Algorithm. The load balancer
always submits the burst arrivals to the top-ranked site
Dynamic/static Static Dynamic Dynamic Dynamic within the delay period. Consequently, significant load is
incurred on that particular site, resulting in the performance
Resource Less Less More More
degradation under burst workloads.
Utilization TABLE II. RESPONSE TIME OF VARIOUS ALGORITHMS

Fault tolerance No Yes No
Overload rejection No No Yes
III. PROBLEM UNRAVELING
There are various algorithms available for load balancing
in cloud computing but looking at various issues in the
different algorithm still some research is to be done to
improve the performance and efficiency of the algorithms.
As far as our work is considered, we have analyzed the
current algorithm used for load balancing in private cloud
scenario. The results for the same areas under:
Figure 1. Analysis of Resource allocation in cloud
As shown in Fig.1, the current load balancing mechanism
in cloud computing distributes load to all nodes in round
robin fashion i.e. it simply takes one request and assign it to
the first node and then it moves to the next node in queue
which is shown in the figure 1. Similarly, second request
will be allocated to second node if enough resources are
available on that node else it will move to the very next
node after that node in a queue and when end of the queue is
reached it will start assigning request again from the first
node. Here, we use resources in terms of memory and space.
There is no concept of resource monitoring hence it doesn't
have any idea that the node whom it assigns the request is
heavy loaded or lightly loaded etc. It may be possible that at
the same time some of the nodes of the cloud are heavily
loaded while others are free (still round robin will assign the
request to that heavy loaded node if it is next in queue)
yes Parameter Round Robin Equally Spread Throttled
Current
yes Execution
Number Of Request 35 35 35
Per 3 Hour
Response Time(s) 142.25s 142.16s 124.62s
Data Center 35.78s 35.69s 18.26s
Processing Time
The simulation of various algorithms is shown in the
Table II. We have used the number of requests as shown in
above table for each load balancing policy one by one and
depending on that the result calculated for the metrics like
response time, request processing time has been shown. It
can be seen from the table that the overall response time of
Round Robin policy and ESCE policy is almost same while
that of Throttled policy is low as compared to other two
policies.
No doubt the throttled response time is good compare to
other but the problem in this policy is that, it doesn't
measure the performance of data center and the load on the
data center. The random arrival of load in cloud
environment can cause some nodes to be heavily loaded
while other nodes are idle or only lightly loaded. Equally
load sharing improves performance by distributing load to
the nodes according to the available resources on that node.
Performance estimation of any system is based on efficient
resource allocation characteristics. The considered
characteristics have an impact on cost optimization, which
can be obtained by improved response time and processing
time.
IV. PROPOSED SOLUTION
In our proposed algorithm, there would be continuous
monitoring of the resources to know the status of an
available resource on each of the node and there would be a
queue in which the weight factor of node will be stored and
update whenever continuous monitoring is done. Once a
request comes from client, the resources would be allocated
from the information present in the queue dynamically to
balance the load on nodes to gain high performance and
efficiency.
As per the research we took into consideration, the
dynamic Round Robin strategy is more advisable for cloud
environment, because in cloud it may happen that nodes
have different number of resources or a single resource may
have two different requests, that is one request may be of

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1GB of memory while other one, just ask for 500MB. Even
the time to serve that particular client, for the node, is not fix
(it depends on the logging out time of the client from cloud).
Hence the best and manifesting way to describe node’s load
is to monitor it continuously and to assign load accordingly
V. IMPLEMENTATION ARCHITECTURE
Fig.2 depicts the proposed working model on which the
research is to be carried out. This model provides us the
platform to implement the research on load balancing within
cloud computing. The basic components involved in this
architecture are Cloud Controller, Node Controller, Virtual
machines, User and Load Balancer.
CloudControler CloudControler
Load Balancer Load Balancer
Node Controller Node Controller Node Controller
VM VM VM VM VM VM VM VM VM
Figure 2. Architecture[9]
Cloud Controller (CL): The first phase of cloud
infrastructure is cloud controller. It is the root of overall
structure. The request sent by a user is authentically
accepted by the cloud controller and passed to next phase of
this structure. This phase provides a web interface to user
and also interacts with the rest components of cloud
infrastructure. Load balancer algorithm would be
implemented on cloud controller.
Node Controller (NC): The next phase is Node Controller.
The request accepted by cloud controller is passed to node
controller. It is a Virtual extension (VT) enabled server
capable of running KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine) as the
hypervisor. The entire process is controlled by cloud server.
The VMs running on the NC are called instances. Node
Control Server runs on each node and controls the life span
of instances running on the node. The NC interacts with the
OS and the hypervisor running on the node along with the
Cloud Control.
Virtual Machines (VMs): VMs can be considered as
instances of the cloud. Different types of instances are
created for every user depending upon the demand of
services. The request of the user is fulfilled through
instances. Instances are stored within Node Controller. The
Load balancing of these instances are done as the request for
service is received from the client.
User: Users are generally the cloud users who demands for
services and have access to those services of the cloud.
Load Balancer: It is a new load balancer algorithm
implemented within cloud controller which would balance
the load as per the user request.
VI. PROPOSED ALGORITHM
Below is the scenario of how the algorithm is implemented.
Depending upon the entire research, the concept can be
implemented through the following algorithm.
Node Controller
VM VM VM
Figure 3.Working Model
There are various steps in the algorithm:
Node information queue will contain the information
about all nodes considering the parameter namely basic
node information, free space (in terms of memory and
processor) and performance details about that node. The
information would be gathered by sending a request on the
cloud node and the information about the resources would
be communicated as a response from the node and the queue
would be updated dynamically from the available response.
HTV performance algorithm will measure the
information like performance, load on the particular node,
total space available and it will store these information in
the queue and using these information, the load balancer
would work dynamically for load balancing of resources
which in turn will help in proper allocation and distribution
of resources among the node and will increase the
performance and efficiency of resources allocation among
nodes.
There are two basic parameter which are used namely
load on nodes and response time of node. Based on these
parameters, our algorithm will output some information
dynamically in a temporary queue for the further resource
allocation.
Temporary dynamic queue stores the information given
by the HTV algorithm dynamically. It the store the
information about the nodes list which would be further
used for the allocation in the next round of allocation.
Permanent Dynamic queue once the queue is generated
using HTV performance algorithm the permanent queue will
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be replaced by temporary queue for next revolution of HTV
performance algorithm every time when it is updated after
monitoring. So if a new client request arrives it will be
assigned to the current node pointer in permanent queue and
the pointer moves to the next node in queue and the same
allocation procedure will work.
Working of HTV performance algorithm: For better
performance of our algorithms two parameters are taken in
to consideration.
1. Load on the server.
2. Current performance of server.
Load on the server: We are more interested in free
resources available on node. The node having more free
resources will able to handle more requests easily without
degrading its performance.
Current performance of Sever: A request is send to the
node at regular interval and in response, the performance
parameter is measured. It may be the case that the response
time of node may change every time depending on the client
usage of its resources. So, the above two parameters are
used to built a new queue for future allocation. This
information of the entire node is calculated by a
mathematical function to count z-parameter value for each
node.
The pseudo code of the algorithm is as under
Pseudo Code
Step 1: [Calculate Load Factor x]
x  (Total _Resources
– Used _Resources)
// where x is free memory in terms of percentage.
Step 2: [Calculate Performance Factor y]:
y1  average (current _response _time)
y  y1 - (previously calculated y1)
y  y/(previous y1)*100 //counting y in terms of
previously counted y1.
Step 3: [finding z]
z  x - y;
If (z < 0)
z = 0;
Step 4: [Find minimum of all z except the nodes with z
value 0]
Min _z= min (all z’s)
Step 5: [Find min _factor and divide all z by that factor]
Min _factor  min _z
Z  z / min _factor
Step 6: [Generate Dynamic Queue on base of z]
In the above algorithm x is considered as a free load on
server, y for the performance on the server and y1 is the
current response time.
Explanation
Step-1:
The value of x is calculated by considering the total
available resources and allocated resources on the server.
The available resources would be calculated using the
equation x = (Total _Resources – Used _Resources). Once x
value is calculated for all nodes servers we get the available
free load on the servers.
Step 2:
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Here the performance factor calculates the increase or
decrease in performance on the server and the calculated
value is stored y. Now for calculating y a request is send to
all the nodes at regular interval of time and the response
time(total of both request time + response time ) is
calculated. So every hour sever would have various values
of y and averaging all the value of y1 would be calculated to
generate a queue. Now, the previously calculated y1 will be
deducted from current values y1 which was currently used
to calculate the performance (i.e. Response time increases or
decreases). The same way the increased or decreased
performance is calculated and the value of y is calculated as
the percentage of previously counted y1. That is y/(previous
y1)*100.
Step 3:
Counting z = x - y; Here Y value is subtracted from x value
to count the z value
Here we are interested in the node with the lowest response
time hence we subtract the y value from x. i.e. nodes having
more response time will contain less z value and they will
get less number of requests to handle.
Now suppose in the worst case node have very less memory
available and very large response time than z = x – y may
get negative value so we need to remove that node from
queue (think that it is temporary unavailable) and it will not
consider in any step of the algorithm and in this iteration of
algorithm it will not get any request to handle.
If any node is temporarily unavailable the response time will
be infinite (or very large) of that specific node. So the y
value also becomes too much large for that node which will
leads to minus z value.
And in step 4 of algorithm that node will discarded for
future process in this irritation of algorithm.
So with this step we can also detect the unavailable node
(with value of y as infinite or to large).
Step 4:
Once the z is calculated then the minimum of all z which we
calculated are stored in min _z.
Here we will not consider node with 0 z value so, this
node will be remove from any further process and for this
iteration of the algorithm.
In the next iteration of the algorithm the z value of node
will count again so it will get the next chance to join cloud
environment if it is ready for it i.e. available.
Step 5:
Here minimum factor is calculated and divided by all the
factors of z.
Suppose z values for node 1 to 5 are given below:
Node z-value
N1 22.30
N2 12.23
N3 43.00
N4 14.36
N5 28.29
Now N2 has a list z value and so every nodes z value are
divided by N2’s z value and stores a float or cell value of it
to make it easy and less complex. So now the z values are 2,
1, 4, 1, and 2.
Node with z value 0 will get 0 as z / min_fact so they can’t
get any request to handle.
Step 6:
From the above value N1 has the capacity to handle two
requests, node N2 can handle only one while N3 will handle
4 to keep load balanced on each node. So the temporary
queue will look be prepared as follows:
N3 N3 N3 N3 N1 N1 N5 N5 N4 N2
Figure 4.Dynamic Queue

So, once the temporary queue and permanent queue will be

changed and accordingly, first 4 requests will go to node 3
than 2 will go to n1 and so on until the end of queue. Once
the queue is over it will assign next 4 to N3 and so on.
In this way the whole algorithm will work and would help
in increasing the performance and improve load balancing.
VII. CONCLUSION
As such cloud computing being wide area of research and
one of the major topics of research is dynamic load
balancing, so the following research will be focusing on
algorithm considering mainly two parameters firstly, load
on the server and secondly, current performance of server.
By considering these parameters, our algorithm outperforms
the existing load balancing schemes.
VIII. FUTURE WORK
In future, we are going to incorporate this into existing
cloud computing architecture for better performance and
effective utilization of resources. We would consider
parameters like types of load on specific server and user
base priority.
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