Towards optimal resource allocation for differentiated multimedia services in cloud computing environment

Cloud-based multimedia services have been widely used in recent years. As the growing scale, users often have quite diverse quality of service (QoS) expectations. A key challenge for differentiated services is how to optimally allocate cloud resources to satisfy different users. In this paper, we study resource allocation problems for differentiated multimedia services. We first propose a queueing model to characterize differentiated services in cloud. Based on the model, we optimize cloud resources in the first-come first-served (FCFS) scenario and priority scenario. In each scenario, we formulate and solve the optimal resource allocation problem to minimize resource cost under response time constraints. We conduct extensive simulations with practical parameters of Amazon EC2. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed resource allocation schemes can optimally configure resources to provide satisfactory services at the minimal resource cost.