Paper Info
Title
Bidding Strategies in QoS-Aware Cloud Systems Based on N-Armed Bandit Problems
Abstract
In this paper we consider a set of Software as a Service (SaaS) providers, that offer a set of Web services using the Cloud facilities provided by an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider. We assume that the IaaS provider offers a pay only what you use scheme similar to the Amazon EC2 service, comprising flat, on demand, and spot virtual machine instances. We propose a two-stage provisioning scheme. In the first stage, the SaaS providers determine the number of required flat and on demand instances by means of standard optimization techniques. In the second stage, the SaaS providers compete by bidding for the spot instances which are instantiated using the unused IaaS capacity. We put our focus on the bidding decision process by the SaaS providers, which takes place during the second stage, and apply N-armed bandit problems, in which the player is faced repeatedly with a choice among N different options, and every time he submits his decision evaluating past feedbacks. Through numerical experiments, we analyze proposed strategies under different scenarios and prove the SaaS providers ability to refine their behavior round by round and to determine the best bid so to maximize their revenue and achieve as many spot resources as possible, also addressing the importance of a trade-off between exploration and exploitation, i.e., among greedy and non-greedy actions.
Year
DOI
Venue
2014
10.1109/NCCA.2014.15
Network Cloud Computing and Applications
Keywords
Field
DocType
bidding decision process,demand instance,n-armed bandit problems,saas provider,iaas provider,qos-aware cloud systems,n different option,spot resource,behavior round,bidding strategies,unused iaas capacity,spot instance,saas providers ability,quality of service,virtual machines,cloud computing,web services,tendering,probability
Virtual machine,Computer security,Computer science,Quality of service,Software as a service,Provisioning,Procurement,Web service,Bidding,Cloud computing
Conference
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
2333-2549
2
0.36
References 
Authors
18
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Marco Abundo1172.53
Valerio Di Valerio2867.82
Valeria Cardellini31514106.12
Francesco Lo Presti4107378.83