Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)This paper presents the Topology-aware Virtual Machine Placement algorithm, which aims at placing groups of virtual machines in data centers. It was designed to occupy small areas of the data center network in order to consolidate the network flows produced by the virtual machines. Extensive simulation is used to show that the proposed algorithm prevents the formation of network bottlenecks, therefore accepting more requests of allocation of virtual machines. Moreover, these advantages are obtained without compromising energy efficiency. The energy consumption of servers and switches are taken into account, and these are switched off whenever idle.1417590Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) [2014/01154-4]National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) [131821/2013-0]Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)