Prediction-Based Resource Assignment Scheme to Maximize the Net Profit of Cloud Service Providers

In a cloud computing environment, users using the pay-as-you-go billing model can relinquish their services at any point in time and pay accordingly. From the perspective of the Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), this is not beneficial as they may lose the opportunity to earn from the relinquished resources. Therefore, this paper tackles the resource assignment problem while considering users relinquishment and its impact on the net profit of CSPs. As a solution, we first compare different ways to predict user behavior (i.e. how likely a user will leave the system before its scheduled end time) and deduce a better prediction technique based on linear regression. Then, based on the RACE (Relinquishment-Aware Cloud Economics) model proposed in [1], we develop a relinquishment-aware resource optimization model to estimate the amount of resources to assign on the basis of predicted user behavior. Simulations performed with CloudSim show that cloud service providers can gain more by estimating the amount of resources using better prediction techniques rather than blindly assigning resources to users. They also show that the proposed prediction-based resource assignment scheme typically generates more profit for a lower or similar utilization.

Towards Optimal Planning and Scheduling in Smart Homes

This research addresses the planning and scheduling problem in and among the smart homes in a community microgrid. We develop a bi-linear algorithm, named ECO-Trade to generate the near-optimal schedules of the households’ loads, storage and energy sources. The algorithm also facilitates Peer-to-Peer (P2P) energy trading among the smart homes in a community microgrid. However, P2P trading potentially results in an unfair cost distribution among the participating households. To the best of our knowledge, the ECO-Trade algorithm is the first near-optimal cost optimization algorithm which considers the unfair cost distribution problem for a Demand Side Management (DSM) system coordinated with P2P energy trading. It also solves the time complexity problem of our previously proposed optimal model. Our results show that the solution time of the ECO-Trade algorithm is mostly less than a minute. It also shows that 97% of the solutions generated by the ECO-Trade algorithm are optimal solutions. Furthermore, we analyze the solutions and identify that the algorithm sometimes gets trapped at a local minimum because it alternately sets the microgrid price and quantity as constants. Finally, we describe the reasons of the cost increase by a local minimum and analyze its impact on cost optimization.