Enhancing the Distribution of Idle Cost for Scheduling Tasks without Setup Cost in Cloud Computing

Issues of task scheduling in the centre of cloud computing are becoming more important, and the cost is one of the most important parameters used for scheduling tasks. This study aims to investigate the problem of online task scheduling of the identified job of MapReduce on cloud computing infrastructure. It was proposed that the virtualized cloud computing setup comprised machines that host multiple identical virtual machines (VMs) that need to be activated earlier and run continuously, and booting a VM requires a constant setup time. A VM that remains running even though it is no longer used is considered an idle VM. Furthermore, this study aims to distribute the idle cost of the VMs rather than the cost of setting up them among tasks in a fair manner. This study also is an extension of previous studies which solved the problems that occurred when distributing the idle cost and setting up the cost of VMs among tasks. It classifies the tasks into three groups (long, mid, and short) and distributes the idle cost among the groups then among the tasks of the groups. The main contribution of this paper is the developing of a clairvoyant algorithm that addressed important factors such as the delay and the cost that occurred by waiting to setup VM (active VM). Also, when the VMs are run continually and some VMs become in idle state, the idle cost will be distributed among the current tasks in a fair manner. The results of this study, in comparison with previous studies, showed that the idle cost and the setup cost that was distributed among tasks were better than the idle cost and the setup cost distributed in those studies.