Just-in-time server procurement to private cloud for mobile thin-client service

Mobile thin-client services are gaining lots of attention from companies who concern about the security yet recognize the benefits of mobile computing in their businesses. The service is based on a private cloud system hosting virtual machines that can execute mobile OS instances. The owner of the private cloud needs to prepare sufficient server resources for hosting those virtual machines. In this paper, we propose a framework to guide server procurement decisions in a private cloud for mobile thin-client service, which aims to minimize the cost of unused servers while avoiding service level violation due to the lack of resources. To make a timely server procurement decision, the framework combines the techniques for workload estimation to individual VMs, demand estimation of newly created VMs and repetitive simulation of VM replacement algorithm. Through a simulation study, we show that the proposed framework can reduce the cost of unused servers by 25% while satisfying a service level, compared with a time-based heuristic decision method.