The workload prediction and resource allocation significantly play an inevitable role in production of an efficient cloud environment. The proactive estimation of future workload followed by decision of resource allocation have become a prior solution to handle other in-built challenges like the under/over-loading of physical machines, resource wastage, Quality-of-Services (QoS) violations, load balancing,VM migration and many more. In this context, the paper presents a comprehensive survey of workload forecasting and predictive resource management models in cloud environment. A conceptual framework for workload forecasting and resource management, categorization of existing machine learning based resources allocation techniques, and major challenges of inefficient distribution of physical resource distribution are discussed pertaining to cloud computing. Thereafter, a thorough survey of existing state-of-the-art contributions empowering machine learning based approaches in the field of cloud workload prediction and resource management are rendered. Finally, the paper explores and concludes various emerging challenges and future research directions concerning elastic resource management in cloud environment.