The effects of untruthful bids on user utilities and stability in computing markets

Sergei Shudler*, Lior Amar, Amnon Barak, Ahuva Mu'alem

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

Markets of computing resources typically consist of a cluster (or a multi-cluster) and jobs that arrive over time and request computing resources in exchange for payment. In this paper we study a real system that is capable of preemptive process migration (i.e. moving jobs across nodes) and that uses a market-based resource allocation mechanism for job allocation. Specifically, we formalize our system into a market model and employ simulation-based analysis (performed on real data) to study the effects of users' behavior on performance and utility. Typically online settings are characterized by a large amount of uncertainty; therefore it is reasonable to assume that users will consider simple strategies to game the system. We thus suggest a novel approach to modeling users' behavior called the Small Risk-aggressive Group model. We show that under this model untruthful users experience degraded performance. The main result and the contribution of this paper is that using the k-th price payment scheme, which is a natural adaptation of the classical second-price scheme, discourages these users from attempting to game the market. The preemptive capability makes it possible not only to use the k-th price scheme, but also makes our scheduling algorithm superior to other non-preemptive algorithms. Finally, we design a simple one-shot game to model the interaction between the provider and the consumers. We then show (using the same simulation-based analysis) that market stability in the form of (symmetric) Nash-equilibrium is likely to be achieved in several cases.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationCCGrid 2010 - 10th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Cluster, Cloud, and Grid Computing
Pages205-214
Number of pages10
DOIs
StatePublished - 2010
Event10th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud, and Grid Computing, CCGrid 2010 - Melbourne, VIC, Australia
Duration: 17 May 201020 May 2010

Publication series

NameCCGrid 2010 - 10th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Cluster, Cloud, and Grid Computing

Conference

Conference10th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud, and Grid Computing, CCGrid 2010
Country/TerritoryAustralia
CityMelbourne, VIC
Period17/05/1020/05/10

Keywords

  • Market stability
  • Marketbased scheduling
  • Pricing
  • Resource allocation
  • Strategic behavior

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