Cloud Task Scheduling Using Modified Penguins Search Optimization Algorithm

The cloud computing has emerged as a novel distributed computing system in past few years. It provides computation and resources over the Internet via dynamic provisioning of services. There are quite a few challenges and issues connected with implementation of cloud computing. This paper considers one of its major problems, i.e. task scheduling. The function of an efficient task scheduling algorithm is that it concentrates not only on attaining the requirements of the user but also in enhancing the efficiency of the cloud computing system. Cloud task scheduling is an NP-hard optimization problem, and many meta-heuristic algorithms have been proposed to solve it. This paper proposes a modified Penguins Search Optimization Algorithm (MPeSOA) for efficient cloud task scheduling. The main contribution of our work is to schedule all tasks to available virtual machines so that the makespan is minimized, resource utilization is increased and the degree of imbalance is reduced. The proposed scheduling algorithm was simulated using the CloudSim 4.0 simulator. Experimental results showed that the proposed MPeSOA outperformed three existing meta-heuristics, namely Penguins Search Optimization Algorithm (PeSOA), Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO).