Live Database Migration for Elasticity in a Multitenant Database for Cloud Platforms

The growing popularity of cloud computing as a platform for deploying internet scale applications has seen a large number of web applications being deployed in the cloud. These applications (or tenants) are typically characterized by small data footprints, different schemas, and variable load patterns. Scalable multitenant DataBase Management Systems (DBMS) running on a cluster of commodity servers are thus critical for a cloud service provider to support a large number of small applications. Multitenant DBMSs often collocate multiple tenants' databases on a single server for effective resource sharing. Due to the variability in load, elastic load balancing of tenants' data is critical for performance and cost minimization.