An Emergency Demand Response Mechanism for Cloud Computing

Abstract

We study emergency demand response (EDR) mechanisms from data centers' perspective, where a cloud data center participates in a mandatory EDR program while receiving online computing job bids. We target a realistic EDR mechanism where: i) The cloud provider dynamically packs different types of resources on servers into requested VMs and computes job schedules to meet users' requirements; ii) The power consumption of servers in the cloud is limited by the grid through the EDR program; iii) The operating cost of the cloud is considered in the calculation of social welfare, measured by electricity cost. We propose an online auction for dynamic cloud resource provisioning under the EDR program, which runs in polynomial time, achieves truthfulness and close-to-optimal social welfare for the cloud ecosystem.