Abstract: It is critical to allocate multiple types of resources efficiently and fairly in a cloud computing system. Allocating computing and storage resources through resource sharing has emerged as an effective way to improve the resources utilization. While in reality users’ resource requirements may change at any time, previous work has studied mostly based on the premise that the number of tasks required by users is unlimited and the demand does not change. In order to solve the resource allocation problem that users have limited time-varying resource requirements, we propose a multi-resource fair distribution mechanism based on the concept of resource sharing fairness. Firstly, on the conceptual level, we develop a linear programming model according to users’ dynamic limited tasks resource requirements and the amount of resources shared by users. This mechanism is further proved which satisfies four significant fairness properties: Sharing incentive, Pareto efficiency, Envy fairness, Truthfulness. Secondly, on the specific allocation problem, a heuristic algorithm is proposed. This algorithm is designed by the concept of user sharing coefficient, which can ensure the fairness of distribution and the user does not share loss. The theoretical and experimental results show that the proposed resource allocation mechanism achieves good results in ensuring the fairness of user resource allocation and ensuring high resource utilization when users propose multiple sets of time-varying resource requirements.

Key words: cloud computing, resource sharing, time-varying resource requirements, sharing fairness, lexicographically max-min-optimal