GAME-SCORE: Game-based energy-aware cloud scheduler and simulator for computational clouds

Abstract

Energy-awareness remains one of the main concerns for today's cloud computing (CC) operators. The optimisation of energy consumption in both cloud computational clusters and computing servers is usually related to scheduling problems. The definition of an optimal scheduling policy which does not negatively impact to system performance and task completion time is still challenging. In this work, we present a new simulation tool for cloud computing, GAME-SCORE, which implements a scheduling model based on the Stackelberg game. This game presents two main players: a) the scheduler and b) the energy-efficiency agent. We used the GAME-SCORE simulator to analyse the efficiency of the proposed game-based scheduling model. The obtained results show that the Stackelberg cloud scheduler performs better than static energy-optimisation strategies and can achieve a fair balance between low energy consumption and short makespan in a very short time.