Multi-Unit Market-based Mechanism Design in Cloud Secondary Markets

The on-demand pricing mechanism, which is one of the most common pricing methods for cloud services, implements the pay-as-you-go model for cloud service users. Moreover, it provides the possibility of cost management and the flexibility of the service time for their service users. Since the on-demand mechanism does not provide all the providers' required information, it is not of interest to them. Thus, the service providers are more inclined to use futures contracts so they can accurately estimate the future needs of their users and plan for the requirements. To add the users' required flexibility to futures contracts, a new concept is introduced to cloud ecosystems, called the secondary market. In this secondary market, brokers and reseller buyers act as mediators to provide the required VMs for the service users. This paper provides a mechanism design that includes a market-based pricing model and a resource allocation mechanism in such environments. The proposed mechanism is based on dynamic double auction models and the suggested market price is computed based on the critical point that is obtained from the presence of the agents. Our experimental results prove that the proposed mechanism outperforms the other algorithms in terms of the overall utility, and the allocation efficiency.