Multi-Objective Optimization of Deadline and Budget-Aware Workflow Scheduling in Uncertain Clouds

Abstract

Cloud technologies are being used nowadays to cope with the increased computing and storage requirements of services and applications. Nevertheless, decisions about resources to be provisioned and the corresponding scheduling plans are far from being easily made especially because of the variability and uncertainty affecting workload demands as well as technological infrastructure performance. In this paper we address these issues by formulating a multi-objective constrained optimization problem aimed at identifying the optimal scheduling plans for scientific workflows to be deployed in uncertain cloud environments. In particular, we focus on minimizing the expected workflow execution time and monetary cost under probabilistic constraints on deadline and budget. According to the proposed approach, this problem is solved offline, that is, prior to workflow execution, with the intention of allowing cloud users to choose the plan of the Pareto optimal set satisfying their requirements and preferences. The analysis of the combined effects of cloud uncertainty and probabilistic constraints has shown that the solutions of the optimization problem are strongly affected by uncertainty. Hence, to properly provision cloud resources, it is compelling to precisely quantify uncertainty and take explicitly into account its effects in the decision process.

Keywords

• Cloud computing
• uncertainty
• multi-objective constrained optimization
• Genetic Algorithm
• Monte Carlo method
• scientific workflows