  Cloud controllers aim at responding to application demands by automatically
scaling the compute resources at runtime to meet performance guarantees and
minimize resource costs. Existing cloud controllers often resort to scaling
strategies that are codified as a set of adaptation rules. However, for a cloud
provider, applications running on top of the cloud infrastructure are more or
less black-boxes, making it difficult at design time to define optimal or
pre-emptive adaptation rules. Thus, the burden of taking adaptation decisions
often is delegated to the cloud application. Yet, in most cases, application
developers in turn have limited knowledge of the cloud infrastructure. In this
paper, we propose learning adaptation rules during runtime. To this end, we
introduce FQL4KE, a self-learning fuzzy cloud controller. In particular, FQL4KE
learns and modifies fuzzy rules at runtime. The benefit is that for designing
cloud controllers, we do not have to rely solely on precise design-time
knowledge, which may be difficult to acquire. FQL4KE empowers users to specify
cloud controllers by simply adjusting weights representing priorities in system
goals instead of specifying complex adaptation rules. The applicability of
FQL4KE has been experimentally assessed as part of the cloud application
framework ElasticBench. The experimental results indicate that FQL4KE
outperforms our previously developed fuzzy controller without learning
mechanisms and the native Azure auto-scaling.
