Core-Selecting Auctions for Dynamically Allocating Heterogeneous VMs in Cloud Computing

In a cloud market, the cloud provider provisions heterogeneous virtual machine (VM) instances from its resource pool, for allocation to cloud users. Auction-based allocations are efficient in assigning VMs to users who value them the most. Existing auction design often overlooks the heterogeneity of VMs, and does not consider dynamic, demand-driven VM provisioning. Moreover, the classic VCG auction leads to unsatisfactory seller revenues and vulnerability to a strategic bidding behavior known as shill bidding. This work presents a new type of core-selecting VM auctions, which are combinatorial auctions that always select bidder charges from the core of the price vector space, with guaranteed economic efficiency under truthful bidding. These auctions represent a comprehensive three-phase mechanism that instructs the cloud provider to judiciously assemble, allocate, and price VM bundles. They are proof against shills, can improve seller revenue over existing auction mechanisms, and can be tailored to maximize truthfulness.