Abstract
Cloud computing is developing as a platform for next generation systems where users can pay as they use facilities of cloud computing like any other utilities. Cloud environment involves a set of virtual machines, which share the same computation facility and storage. Due to rapid rise in demand for cloud computing services several algorithms are being developed and experimented by the researchers in order to enhance the task scheduling process of the machines thereby offering optimal solution to the users by which the users can process the maximum number of tasks through minimal utilization of the resources. Task scheduling denotes a set of policies to regulate the task processed by a system. Virtual machine scheduling is essential for effective operations in distributed environment. The aim of this paper is to achieve efficient task scheduling of virtual machines, this study proposes a hybrid algorithm through integrating two prominent heuristic algorithms namely the BAT Algorithm and the Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm in order to optimize the virtual machine scheduling process. The performance evaluation of the three algorithms (BAT, ACO and Hybrid) reveal that the hybrid algorithm performs better when compared with that of the other two algorithms.