A Critical Survey of Virtual Machine Migration Techniques in Cloud Computing

In Cloud Data Centers (CDC), virtualization is achieved by parallel processing of multiple virtual machines (VM) on a single cloud server, which has led to an exponential increase in the number of cloud users. With the help of live Virtual Machine Migrations (VMM), this ascending demand for resources like storage, communication and computing can be handled effectively. Different resource management strategies have been deployed to optimize the efficiency of cloud data centers through the migration of a single or multiple VMs. The establishment of numerous CDCs is a result of the aroused interest of users in cloud computing. This paper reviews state-of-the-art of virtual machine migration schemes while investigating the critical aspects of virtual machine migration schemes through a comprehensive analysis of the existing schemes. The objectives of existing VM migration schemes are highlighted through a set of parameters derived from the literature. Finally, some of the open research issues in the VM migration domain are highlighted.