Towards a generic multilayer negotiation framework for efficient application provisioning in the cloud

Abstract

The cloud market is nowadays a complex environment where cloud application providers need to maximize their monetary profit and end users look for the most efficient services with the lowest prices. For efficient cloud provisioning, both providers and users should be satisfied in spite of their conflicting needs. Negotiation is the most flexible solution to solve conflicts and enable reaching win-win agreements. Cloud application provisioning has 2 main properties that highly impact the negotiation decision-making models: (1) The interdependence between the business layer and the resource layer, and (2) the dynamic provisioning context (eg, negotiators' preferences and application scheduler). Despite the importance of these 2 properties, the current negotiation models do not take these properties into account. This paper addresses both issues. We propose a multilayer negotiation framework, which also encompasses the potential for dynamic provisioning context. For that, we propose, first, a generic negotiation model dedicated to cloud provisioning. And second, we present its instantiation among cloud layers for efficient SaaS provisioning, to maximize provider profit and increase user satisfaction. The experiments show the benefits of adding negotiation to the provisioning process by improving it for provider profit, number of accepted requests, and client satisfaction. KEYWORDS automated negotiation, cloud provisioning, decision making, quality of service (QoS), SaaS application, service level agreement (SLA) 1 ing the quality of service (QoS) as part of the service level agreement (SLA) contract. 1Cloud provisioning is generally governed by the SLA contract established between the parties concerned. An SLA is a formal representation of QoS, with penalties and obligations agreed on by the contractors. 2 For an efficient cloud application provisioning, business providers aim to optimize profit (costs of rented VMs, budget, and penalty costs) and to satisfy end users (budget, response time, deadline, etc). For this reason, providers require SLA-and profit-aware provisioning strategies. In fact, applying classical provisioning strategies 3 (such as 1VMperAll, 1VMperJob, and BinPacking heuristics) may lead to a less than the optimal profit. These strategies focus only on resource utilization, which may lead either to an SLA violation, when resources are overloaded, or profit loss due to an underutilization of rented resources.Most SLA-based provisioning algorithms use a take-it-or-leave-it strategy. 4 When it is not possible to provide the requested service (while satisfying the obligations of the SLA), the provider rejects the request to avoid an SLA violation. By considering the constraints of resource provisioning (cost, availability, etc), the business provider may reject several requests, which may lead to a loss of potential profit.With the evolution of the cloud market and the competitiveness among cloud providers, a take-it-or-leave-it strategy may be a bad wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/cpe

Agent-based Multi-tier SLA Negotiation for Intercloud

“…Wu et al [20] and Sim [3] proposed an automated negotiation model that takes both time and market factors into account to address the dynamic cloud market environment. In the intercloud, Omezzine et al [14], Adabi et al [46] and Shojaiemehr et al [47] proposed mixed strategies of time, market and behavior agent negotiation to enhance the success rate and satisfaction level of agents, which take the opponent's behavior into account and the agents' behavior of making concessions is based on post-negotiation data recording.…”

Agent-based Multi-tier SLA Negotiation for Intercloud

“…Wu et al [20] and Sim [3] proposed an automated negotiation model that takes both time and market factors into account to address the dynamic cloud market environment. In the intercloud, Omezzine et al [14], Adabi et al [44] and Shojaiemehr et al [45] proposed mixed strategies of time, market and behavior agent negotiation to enhance the success rate and satisfaction level of agents, which take the opponent's behavior into account and the agents' behavior of making concessions is based on post-negotiation data recording.…”

“…However, the intercloud model raises more challenges than the single cloud model in the market, because the intercloud model is a larger-scale distributed and interconnected system composed of individual cloud consumers and providers. Moreover, the intercloud consists of a competitive and cooperative multi-tier market [2,13,14], wherein the provider not only competes for the resource demand but also acts as the consumer to cooperate with other providers, resulting in a dynamic and on-demand federation cloud. Therefore, establishing a healthier and more efficient intercloud ecosystem, which needs an automatic market-oriented approach not only solves the conflict between the consumers and the cloud providers but also supports the coordination among cloud providers to allow scalable resources.…”

“…For the intercloud market, to evaluate the impact of the negotiation models and prove that intercloud can deliver better service quality, the performance of two-tiered AFCN model (denoted as AFCN-AFCN) is compared with that of typical bargaining models used in the case of two-tiered SLA negotiation, including the model that considers the time factor proposed by Dastjerdi et al[21], denoted as T-T, the model that considers the time and market factors proposed by Wu et al[20], denoted as T_M-T_M, and the model that considers time, market and behavior factors proposed by Omezzine et al[14] denoted as T_M_B-T_M_B.All these bargaining models take into account the time factor, and their time-dependent concession strategies are similar. To compare the rationality of the bargaining model, we select the same polynomial decision function, how the values of an issue are automatically adjusted by the agents based on the time factor.…”

Emerging challenges and frontiers in cloud computing

“…Omezzine et al highlight the complexity of a cloud operational environment where the application providers want to maximize their profit and the end user demands high quality efficient application provisioning. The significance of negotiation has been addressed as a way forward to satisfy both service providers and service users.…”