A Virtual Resource Pricing Mechanism Based on Three-Side Gaming Model in Large-Scale Cloud Environments

Abstract

Recently, network virtualization technology has become a promising approach to efficiently share physical substrate networks in a cloud. However, finding an appropriate mapping between nodes and links in virtual networks is still a challenging problem. To overcome the demerits of existing price mechanisms, the author presents a game-based pricing model, in which resource configuration and provision among virtual networks is defined as a two-phrase gaming model. In this gaming model, a cooperative gaming model is applied to optimize resource benefits, while a non-cooperative gaming model is used to balance user costs and provider benefits. Extensive experiments are conducted in a real-world cloud, and the results show that this pricing mechanism can effectively improve the resource allocation efficiency as well as the resource profits of cloud providers. In addition, it also exhibits better robustness than many existing methods when a cloud system is facing intensive workloads.