A Framework of Price Bidding Configurations for Resource Usage in Cloud Computing

In this paper, we focus on price bidding strategies of multiple users competition for resource usage in cloud computing. We consider the problem from a game theoretic perspective and formulate it into a non-cooperative game among the multiple cloud users, in which each cloud user is informed with incomplete information of other users. For each user, we design a utility function which combines the net profit with time efficiency and try to maximize its value. We design a mechanism for the multiple users to evaluate their utilities and decide whether to use the cloud service. Furthermore, we propose a framework for each cloud user to compute an appropriate bidding price. At the beginning, by relaxing the condition that the allocated number of servers can be fractional, we prove the existence of Nash equilibrium solution set for the formulated game. Then, we propose an iterative algorithm (IA), which is designed to compute a Nash equilibrium solution. The convergency of the proposed algorithm is also analyzed and we find that it converges to a Nash equilibrium if several conditions are satisfied. Finally, we revise the obtained solution and propose a near-equilibrium price bidding algorithm (NPBA) to characterize the whole process of our proposed framework. The experimental results show that the obtained near-equilibrium solution is close to the equilibrium one.