Self-Learning Cloud Controllers: Fuzzy Q-Learning for Knowledge Evolution

Auto-scaling features enable cloud applications to maintain enough resources to satisfy demand spikes, reduce costs and keep performance in check. Most auto-scaling strategies rely on a predefined set of rules to scale up/down the required resources depending on the application usage. Those rules are however difficult to devise and generalize, and users are often left alone tuning auto-scale parameters of essentially blackbox applications. In this paper, we propose a novel fuzzy reinforcement learning controller, FQL4KE, which automatically scales up or down resources to meet performance requirements. The Q-Learning technique, a model-free reinforcement learning strategy, frees users of most tuning parameters. FQL4KE has been successfully applied and we therefore think that a fuzzy controller with Q-Learning is indeed a promising combination for auto-scaling resources.