Resource Provisioning Policies to Increase IaaS Provider's Profit in a Federated Cloud Environment

TLDR

Cloud federation enables IaaS providers to outsource VM requests during demand spikes and to terminate cheaper spot VMs, thereby reducing rejected requests and improving pricing, profit, QoS, and utilization. The paper proposes policies to guide IaaS providers in deciding when to terminate spot VMs, outsource, or contribute to a federation in order to increase resource utilization and profit. The policies provide a decision framework for terminating spot VMs, outsourcing, or contributing to the federation. Simulation results show that the proposed policies improve profit, utilization, and QoS by reducing the number of rejected VM requests in a cloud federation environment.

Abstract

Cloud Federation is a recent paradigm that helps Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) providers to overcome resource limitation during spikes in demand for Virtual Machines (VMs) by outsourcing requests to other federation members. IaaS providers also have the option of terminating spot VMs, i.e, cheaper VMs that can be canceled to free resources for more profitable VM requests. By both approaches, providers can expect to reject less profitable requests. For IaaS providers, pricing and profit are two important factors, in addition to maintaining a high Quality of Service (QoS) and utilization of their resources to remain in the business. For this, a clear understanding of the usage pattern, types of requests, and infrastructure costs are necessary while making decisions to terminate spot VMs, outsourcing or contributing to the federation. In this paper, we propose policies that help in the decision-making process to increase resources utilization and profit. Simulation results indicate that the proposed policies enhance the profit, utilization, and QoS (smaller number of rejected VM requests) in a Cloud federation environment.