Boxiong Tan

Bio: Boxiong Tan is an academic researcher from Victoria University of Wellington. The author has contributed to research in topics: Container (abstract data type) & Resource allocation. The author has an hindex of 6, co-authored 12 publications receiving 88 citations.

Evolutionary Multi-Objective Optimization for Web Service Location Allocation Problem

Abstract: With the ever increasing number of functionally similar web services being available on the Internet, the market competition is becoming intense. Web service providers (WSPs) realize that good Quality of Service (QoS) is a key of business success and low network latency is a critical measurement of good QoS. Because network latency is related to location, a straightforward way to reduce network latency is to allocate services to proper locations. However, Web Service Location Allocation Problem (WSLAP) is a challenging task since there are multiple objectives potentially conflicting with each other and the solution search space has a combinatorial nature. In this paper, we consider minimizing the network latency and total cost simultaneously and model the WSLAP as a multi-objective optimization problem. We develop a new PSO-based algorithm to provide a set of trade-off solutions. The results show that the new algorithm can provide a more diverse range of solutions than the compared three well known multi-objective optimization algorithms. Moreover, the new algorithm performs better especially on large problems.

A Cooperative Coevolution Genetic Programming Hyper-Heuristic Approach for On-line Resource Allocation in Container-based Clouds

Abstract: Containers are lightweight and provide the potential to reduce more energy consumption of data centers than Virtual Machines (VMs) in container-based clouds. The on-line resource allocation is the most common operation in clouds. However, the on-line Resource Allocation in Container-based clouds (RAC) is new and challenging because of its two-level architecture, i.e. the allocations of containers to VMs and the allocation of VMs to physical machines. These two allocations interact with each other, and hence cannot be made separately. Since on-line container allocation requires a real-time response, most current allocation techniques rely on heuristics (e.g. First Fit and Best Fit), which do not consider the comprehensive information such as workload patterns and VM types. As a result, resources are not used efficiently and the energy consumption is not sufficiently optimized. We first propose a novel model of the on-line RAC problem with the consideration of VM overheads, VM types and an affinity constraint. Then, we design a Cooperative Coevolution Genetic Programming (CCGP) hyper-heuristic approach to solve the RAC problem. The CCGP can learn the workload patterns and VM types from historical workload traces and generate allocation rules. The experiments show significant improvement in energy consumption compared to the state-of-the-art algorithms.

Novel Genetic Algorithm with Dual Chromosome Representation for Resource Allocation in Container-Based Clouds

Abstract: Containerization does not only support fast development and deployment of web applications but also provides the potential to improve the energy efficiency in cloud data centers. In container-based clouds, containers are allocated to virtual machines (VMs) and VMs are allocated to physical machines (PMs). This new architecture requires consolidation algorithms to select heterogeneous VMs to host containers and consolidate VMs to PMs simultaneously. Existing server consolidation techniques in VM-based clouds can hardly be applied because of the two-level architecture of the container-based clouds. This paper proposes a novel genetic algorithm (GA) with dual chromosome representation to solve the problem. The experiments show that the proposed GA achieves significantly higher energy efficiency than the compared state-of-the-art algorithms on a wide range of test problems.

A NSGA-II-based approach for service resource allocation in Cloud

Abstract: Web service and Cloud computing have significantly reformed the software industry. The need for web service allocation in the cloud environment is increasing dramatically. In order to reduce the cost for service providers as well as improve the utilization of cloud resource for cloud providers, this paper formulates the web service resource allocation in cloud environment problem as a two-level multi-objective bin packing problem. It proposes a NSGA-II-based algorithm with specifically designed genetic operators. We are compared with two varieties of the algorithm. The results show that the proposed algorithm can provide reasonably good results with low violation rate.

A Hybrid Genetic Programming Hyper-Heuristic Approach for Online Two-level Resource Allocation in Container-based Clouds

Abstract: Container technology has become a new trend in both the software industry and cloud computing. Containers support the fast development of web applications and they have the potential to reduce energy consumption in data centers. Containers are usually first allocated to virtual machines (VMs) and VMs are allocated to physical machines. The container allocation is a challenging task which involves a two-level allocation problem. Current research overly simplifies the container allocation into a one-level allocation problem and uses simple rule-based approaches to solve the problem. As a result, the resource is not allocated efficiently which leads to high energy consumption. This paper provides a novel definition of the two-level container allocation problem. Then, we develop a hybrid approach using genetic programming hyper-heuristics combined with human-designed rules to solve the problem. The experiments show that our hybrid approach is able to significantly reduce energy consumption than solely using human-designed rules.

Handling Constrained Multiobjective Optimization Problems With Constraints in Both the Decision and Objective Spaces

Abstract: Constrained multiobjective optimization problems (CMOPs) are frequently encountered in real-world applications, which usually involve constraints in both the decision and objective spaces. However, current artificial CMOPs never consider constraints in the decision space (i.e., decision constraints) and constraints in the objective space (i.e., objective constraints) at the same time. As a result, they have a limited capability to simulate practical scenes. To remedy this issue, a set of CMOPs, named DOC, is constructed in this paper. It is the first attempt to consider both the decision and objective constraints simultaneously in the design of artificial CMOPs. Specifically, in DOC, various decision constraints (e.g., inequality constraints, equality constraints, linear constraints, and nonlinear constraints) are collected from real-world applications, thus making the feasible region in the decision space have different properties (e.g., nonlinear, extremely small, and multimodal). On the other hand, some simple and controllable objective constraints are devised to reduce the feasible region in the objective space and to make the Pareto front have diverse characteristics (e.g., continuous, discrete, mixed, and degenerate). As a whole, DOC poses a great challenge for a constrained multiobjective evolutionary algorithm (CMOEA) to obtain a set of well-distributed and well-converged feasible solutions. In order to enhance current CMOEAs’ performance on DOC, a simple and efficient two-phase framework, named ToP, is proposed in this paper. In ToP, the first phase is implemented to find the promising feasible area by transforming a CMOP into a constrained single-objective optimization problem. Then in the second phase, a specific CMOEA is executed to obtain the final solutions. ToP is applied to four state-of-the-art CMOEAs, and the experimental results suggest that it is quite effective.

A Comprehensive Review on NSGA-II for Multi-Objective Combinatorial Optimization Problems

Abstract: This paper provides an extensive review of the popular multi-objective optimization algorithm NSGA-II for selected combinatorial optimization problems viz. assignment problem, allocation problem, travelling salesman problem, vehicle routing problem, scheduling problem, and knapsack problem. It is identified that based on the manner in which NSGA-II has been implemented for solving the aforementioned group of problems, there can be three categories: Conventional NSGA-II, where the authors have implemented the basic version of NSGA-II, without making any changes in the operators; the second one is Modified NSGA-II, where the researchers have implemented NSGA-II after making some changes into it and finally, Hybrid NSGA-II variants, where the researchers have hybridized the conventional and modified NSGA-II with some other technique. The article analyses the modifications in NSGA-II and also discusses the various performance assessment techniques used by the researchers, i.e., test instances, performance metrics, statistical tests, case studies, benchmarking with other state-of-the-art algorithms. Additionally, the paper also provides a brief bibliometric analysis based on the work done in this study.

A survey on evolutionary computation for complex continuous optimization

Abstract: Complex continuous optimization problems widely exist nowadays due to the fast development of the economy and society. Moreover, the technologies like Internet of things, cloud computing, and big data also make optimization problems with more challenges including Many-dimensions, Many-changes, Many-optima, Many-constraints, and Many-costs. We term these as 5-M challenges that exist in large-scale optimization problems, dynamic optimization problems, multi-modal optimization problems, multi-objective optimization problems, many-objective optimization problems, constrained optimization problems, and expensive optimization problems in practical applications. The evolutionary computation (EC) algorithms are a kind of promising global optimization tools that have not only been widely applied for solving traditional optimization problems, but also have emerged booming research for solving the above-mentioned complex continuous optimization problems in recent years. In order to show how EC algorithms are promising and efficient in dealing with the 5-M complex challenges, this paper presents a comprehensive survey by proposing a novel taxonomy according to the function of the approaches, including reducing problem difficulty, increasing algorithm diversity, accelerating convergence speed, reducing running time, and extending application field. Moreover, some future research directions on using EC algorithms to solve complex continuous optimization problems are proposed and discussed. We believe that such a survey can draw attention, raise discussions, and inspire new ideas of EC research into complex continuous optimization problems and real-world applications.

Hybrid Classifier Ensemble for Imbalanced Data

Abstract: The class imbalance problem has become a leading challenge. Although conventional imbalance learning methods are proposed to tackle this problem, they have some limitations: 1) undersampling methods suffer from losing important information and 2) cost-sensitive methods are sensitive to outliers and noise. To address these issues, we propose a hybrid optimal ensemble classifier framework that combines density-based undersampling and cost-effective methods through exploring state-of-the-art solutions using multi-objective optimization algorithm. Specifically, we first develop a density-based undersampling method to select informative samples from the original training data with probability-based data transformation, which enables to obtain multiple subsets following a balanced distribution across classes. Second, we exploit the cost-sensitive classification method to address the incompleteness of information problem via modifying weights of misclassified minority samples rather than the majority ones. Finally, we introduce a multi-objective optimization procedure and utilize connections between samples to self-modify the classification result using an ensemble classifier framework. Extensive comparative experiments conducted on real-world data sets demonstrate that our method outperforms the majority of imbalance and ensemble classification approaches.