{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,12]],"date-time":"2025-10-12T03:05:21Z","timestamp":1760238321371,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":48,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"8","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2020,7,31]],"date-time":"2020-07-31T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1596153600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Algorithms"],"abstract":"<jats:p>Cloud provider Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) gives access to resources in the form of virtual servers, also known as instances. EC2 spot instances (SIs) offer spare computational capacity at steep discounts compared to reliable and fixed price on-demand instances. The drawback, however, is that the delay in acquiring spots can be incredible high. Moreover, SIs may not always be available as they can be reclaimed by EC2 at any given time, with a two-minute interruption notice. In this paper, we propose a multi-workflow scheduling algorithm, allied with a container migration-based mechanism, to dynamically construct and readjust virtual clusters on top of non-reserved EC2 pricing model instances. Our solution leverages recent findings on performance and behavior characteristics of EC2 spots. We conducted simulations by submitting real-life workflow applications, constrained by user-defined deadline and budget quality of service (QoS) parameters. The results indicate that our solution improves the rate of completed tasks by almost 20%, and the rate of completed workflows by at least 30%, compared with other state-of-the-art algorithms, for a worse-case scenario.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/a13080187","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2020,8,3]],"date-time":"2020-08-03T03:16:46Z","timestamp":1596424606000},"page":"187","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":5,"title":["Constructing Reliable Computing Environments on Top of Amazon EC2 Spot Instances"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"13","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-9019-4333","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Altino M.","family":"Sampaio","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"CIICESI, Escola Superior de Tecnologia e Gest\u00e3o, Instituto Polit\u00e9cnico do Porto, 4610-156 Felgueiras, Portugal"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-4135-2347","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Jorge G.","family":"Barbosa","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"LIACC, Departamento de Engenharia Inform\u00e1tica, Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade do Porto, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2020,7,31]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","first-page":"2009","article-title":"Above the clouds: A berkeley view of cloud computing","volume":"28","author":"Fox","year":"2009","journal-title":"Dept. Electr. Eng. Comput. Sci. Univ. Calif. Berkeley Rep. UCB\/EECS"},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"30","DOI":"10.1016\/j.future.2014.06.008","article-title":"Towards high-available and energy-efficient virtual computing environments in the cloud","volume":"40","author":"Sampaio","year":"2014","journal-title":"Future Gener. Comput. Syst."},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Vallee, G., Naughton, T., Engelmann, C., Ong, H., and Scott, S.L. (2008, January 13\u201315). System-level virtualization for high performance computing. Proceedings of the 16th Euromicro Conference on Parallel, Distributed and Network-Based Processing, Toulouse, France.","DOI":"10.1109\/PDP.2008.85"},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Juve, G., and Deelman, E. (2011). Scientific workflows in the cloud. Grids, Clouds and Virtualization, Springer.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-0-85729-049-6_4"},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"36","DOI":"10.1016\/j.future.2014.09.005","article-title":"Elastic Business Process Management: State of the art and open challenges for BPM in the cloud","volume":"46","author":"Schulte","year":"2015","journal-title":"Future Gener. Comput. Syst."},{"key":"ref_6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1267","DOI":"10.1016\/j.future.2018.04.019","article-title":"Design and analysis of authenticated key agreement scheme in cloud-assisted cyber\u2013physical systems","volume":"108","author":"Challa","year":"2020","journal-title":"Future Gener. Comput. Syst."},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"6116","DOI":"10.1109\/JIOT.2020.2970995","article-title":"Energy-efficient provisioning for service function chains to support delay-sensitive applications in network function virtualization","volume":"7","author":"Sun","year":"2020","journal-title":"IEEE Internet Things J."},{"key":"ref_8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"107208","DOI":"10.1016\/j.comnet.2020.107208","article-title":"An effective service-oriented networking management architecture for 5G-enabled internet of things","volume":"173","author":"Huang","year":"2020","journal-title":"Comput. Netw."},{"key":"ref_9","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"3373","DOI":"10.1007\/s11227-015-1438-4","article-title":"Workflow scheduling in cloud: A survey","volume":"71","author":"Wu","year":"2015","journal-title":"J. Supercomput."},{"key":"ref_10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"528","DOI":"10.1016\/j.future.2008.06.012","article-title":"Workflows and e-Science: An overview of workflow system features and capabilities","volume":"25","author":"Deelman","year":"2009","journal-title":"Future Gener. Comput. Syst."},{"key":"ref_11","first-page":"16","article-title":"Deconstructing amazon ec2 spot instance pricing","volume":"1","author":"Schuster","year":"2013","journal-title":"ACM Trans. Econ. Comput."},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"659","DOI":"10.1016\/j.future.2018.07.037","article-title":"Idle block based methods for cloud workflow scheduling with preemptive and non-preemptive tasks","volume":"89","author":"Chen","year":"2018","journal-title":"Future Gener. Comput. Syst."},{"key":"ref_13","first-page":"30","article-title":"Enhancing reliability of workflow execution using task replication and spot instances","volume":"10","author":"Poola","year":"2016","journal-title":"ACM Trans. Auton. Adapt. Syst. (TAAS)"},{"key":"ref_14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Pham, T.P., Ristov, S., and Fahringer, T. (2018, January 2\u20137). Performance and Behavior Characterization of Amazon EC2 Spot Instances. Proceedings of the 2018 IEEE 11th International Conference on Cloud Computing (CLOUD), San Francisco, CA, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/CLOUD.2018.00017"},{"key":"ref_15","unstructured":"Garey, M.R., and Johnson, D.S. (1979). Computers and intractability: A guide to the theory of npcompleteness (series of books in the mathematical sciences), ed. Computers Intractability, WH Freeman and Company."},{"key":"ref_16","first-page":"2","article-title":"Docker: Lightweight linux containers for consistent development and deployment","volume":"2014","author":"Merkel","year":"2014","journal-title":"Linux J."},{"key":"ref_17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Sampaio, A.M., and Barbosa, J.G. (2019, January 15\u201319). Enhancing the Reliability of Compute Environments on Amazon EC2 Spot Instances. Proceedings of the 2019 International Conference on High Performance Computing & Simulation (HPCS), Dublin, Ireland.","DOI":"10.1109\/HPCS48598.2019.9188116"},{"key":"ref_18","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"440","DOI":"10.1016\/j.future.2010.11.003","article-title":"Hybrid computing\u2014Where HPC meets grid and cloud computing","volume":"27","author":"Mateescu","year":"2011","journal-title":"Future Gener. Comput. Syst."},{"key":"ref_19","first-page":"315","article-title":"A comparative cost analysis of fault-tolerance mechanisms for availability on the cloud","volume":"19","author":"Sampaio","year":"2018","journal-title":"Sustain. Comput. Inform. Syst."},{"key":"ref_20","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"34","DOI":"10.1109\/TCC.2015.2404807","article-title":"Monetary cost optimizations for hosting workflow-as-a-service in IaaS clouds","volume":"4","author":"Zhou","year":"2016","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Cloud Comput."},{"key":"ref_21","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Sharma, P., Lee, S., Guo, T., Irwin, D., and Shenoy, P. (2015, January 21\u201324). Spotcheck: Designing a derivative iaas cloud on the spot market. Proceedings of the Tenth European Conference on Computer Systems, Bordeaux, France.","DOI":"10.1145\/2741948.2741953"},{"key":"ref_22","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Williams, D., Jamjoom, H., and Weatherspoon, H. (2012, January 10\u201313). The Xen-Blanket: Virtualize once, run everywhere. Proceedings of the 7th ACM European Conference on Computer Systems, Bern, Switzerland.","DOI":"10.1145\/2168836.2168849"},{"key":"ref_23","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Sharma, P., Chaufournier, L., Shenoy, P., and Tay, Y. (2016, January 12\u201316). Containers and virtual machines at scale: A comparative study. Proceedings of the 17th International Middleware Conference, Trento, Italy.","DOI":"10.1145\/2988336.2988337"},{"key":"ref_24","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Shastri, S., and Irwin, D. (2017, January 24\u201327). HotSpot: Automated server hopping in cloud spot markets. Proceedings of the 2017 Symposium on Cloud Computing, Santa Clara, CA, USA.","DOI":"10.1145\/3127479.3132017"},{"key":"ref_25","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"512","DOI":"10.1109\/TSC.2011.44","article-title":"Monetary cost-aware checkpointing and migration on amazon cloud spot instances","volume":"5","author":"Yi","year":"2011","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Serv. Comput."},{"key":"ref_26","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Voorsluys, W., and Buyya, R. (2012, January 26\u201329). Reliable provisioning of spot instances for compute-intensive applications. Proceedings of the 2012 IEEE 26th International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications, Fukuoka, Japan.","DOI":"10.1109\/AINA.2012.106"},{"key":"ref_27","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2","DOI":"10.1109\/TPDS.2013.15","article-title":"A framework for amazon ec2 bidding strategy under sla constraints","volume":"25","author":"Tang","year":"2013","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Parallel Distrib. Syst."},{"key":"ref_28","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Abundo, M., Di Valerio, V., Cardellini, V., and Presti, F.L. (2015, January 11\u201315). QoS-aware bidding strategies for VM spot instances: A reinforcement learning approach applied to periodic long running jobs. Proceedings of the 2015 IFIP\/IEEE International Symposium on Integrated Network Management (IM), Ottawa, ON, Canada.","DOI":"10.1109\/INM.2015.7140276"},{"key":"ref_29","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"5980","DOI":"10.1007\/s11227-018-2509-0","article-title":"A survey on optimal utilization of preemptible VM instances in cloud computing","volume":"74","author":"Mishra","year":"2018","journal-title":"J. Supercomput."},{"key":"ref_30","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"120","DOI":"10.1016\/j.jocs.2016.10.013","article-title":"Maximizing the completion rate of concurrent scientific applications under time and budget constraints","volume":"23","author":"Arabnejad","year":"2017","journal-title":"J. Comput. Sci."},{"key":"ref_31","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"86","DOI":"10.1016\/j.jcss.2004.07.001","article-title":"Extracting the workflow critical path from the extended well-formed workflow schema","volume":"70","author":"Son","year":"2005","journal-title":"J. Comput. Syst. Sci."},{"key":"ref_32","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"6291","DOI":"10.1007\/s11227-018-2561-9","article-title":"Cost-efficient reactive scheduling for real-time workflows in clouds","volume":"74","author":"Chen","year":"2018","journal-title":"J. Supercomput."},{"key":"ref_33","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Xavier, M.G., Neves, M.V., Rossi, F.D., Ferreto, T.C., Lange, T., and De Rose, C.A. (March, January 27). Performance evaluation of container-based virtualization for high performance computing environments. Proceedings of the 2013 21st Euromicro International Conference on Parallel, Distributed and Network-Based Processing (PDP), Belfast, UK.","DOI":"10.1109\/PDP.2013.41"},{"key":"ref_34","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Ruan, B., Huang, H., Wu, S., and Jin, H. (2016, January 16\u201318). A performance study of containers in cloud environment. Proceedings of the Asia-Pacific Services Computing Conference, Zhangjiajie, China.","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-319-49178-3_27"},{"key":"ref_35","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"175","DOI":"10.1016\/j.future.2016.08.025","article-title":"A performance comparison of container-based technologies for the cloud","volume":"68","author":"Kozhirbayev","year":"2017","journal-title":"Future Gener. Comput. Syst."},{"key":"ref_36","unstructured":"Helsley, M. (2019, January 05). LXC: Linux Container Tools. Available online: https:\/\/developer.ibm.com\/tutorials\/l-lxc-containers\/."},{"key":"ref_37","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Chen, J., Guan, Q., Liang, X., Vernon, L.J., McPherson, A., Lo, L.T., Chen, Z., and Ahrens, J.P. (2017). Docker-Enabled Build and Execution Environment (BEE): An Encapsulated Environment Enabling HPC Applications Running Everywhere. arXiv.","DOI":"10.1109\/BigData.2018.8622572"},{"key":"ref_38","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Al-Dhuraibi, Y., Paraiso, F., Djarallah, N., and Merle, P. (2017, January 25\u201330). Autonomic vertical elasticity of docker containers with elasticdocker. Proceedings of the 2017 IEEE 10th International Conference on Cloud Computing (CLOUD), Honolulu, CA, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/CLOUD.2017.67"},{"key":"ref_39","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"140","DOI":"10.1109\/MWC.2017.1700011","article-title":"Live service migration in mobile edge clouds","volume":"25","author":"Machen","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Wirel. Commun."},{"key":"ref_40","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2020","DOI":"10.1109\/TMC.2018.2871842","article-title":"Efficient Live Migration of Edge Services Leveraging Container Layered Storage","volume":"18","author":"Ma","year":"2018","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Mob. Comput."},{"key":"ref_41","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Zheng, C., and Thain, D. (2015, January 15\u201316). Integrating containers into workflows: A case study using makeflow, work queue, and docker. Proceedings of the 8th International Workshop on Virtualization Technologies in Distributed Computing, Portland, OR, USA.","DOI":"10.1145\/2755979.2755984"},{"key":"ref_42","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"260","DOI":"10.1109\/71.993206","article-title":"Performance-effective and low-complexity task scheduling for heterogeneous computing","volume":"13","author":"Topcuoglu","year":"2002","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Parallel Distrib. Syst."},{"key":"ref_43","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Bharathi, S., Chervenak, A., Deelman, E., Mehta, G., Su, M.H., and Vahi, K. (2008, January 17). Characterization of scientific workflows. Proceedings of the 2008 Third Workshop on Workflows in Support of Large-Scale Science, Austin, TX, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/WORKS.2008.4723958"},{"key":"ref_44","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Deelman, E., Singh, G., Livny, M., Berriman, B., and Good, J. (2008, January 15\u201321). The cost of doing science on the cloud: The montage example. Proceedings of the SC\u201908: Proceedings of the 2008 ACM\/IEEE Conference on Supercomputing, Austin, TX, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/SC.2008.5217932"},{"key":"ref_45","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"158","DOI":"10.1016\/j.future.2012.05.004","article-title":"Deadline-constrained workflow scheduling algorithms for infrastructure as a service clouds","volume":"29","author":"Abrishami","year":"2013","journal-title":"Future Gener. Comput. Syst."},{"key":"ref_46","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"167","DOI":"10.1007\/s10586-015-0530-0","article-title":"Elastic resource provisioning for scientific workflow scheduling in cloud under budget and deadline constraints","volume":"19","author":"Shi","year":"2016","journal-title":"Clust. Comput."},{"key":"ref_47","unstructured":"(2020, July 27). Amazon EC2 T2 Instances. Available online: https:\/\/aws.amazon.com\/ec2\/instance-types\/t2\/."},{"key":"ref_48","first-page":"219","article-title":"Pegasus: A framework for mapping complex scientific workflows onto distributed systems","volume":"13","author":"Deelman","year":"2005","journal-title":"Sci. Program."}],"container-title":["Algorithms"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1999-4893\/13\/8\/187\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T09:53:28Z","timestamp":1760176408000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/1999-4893\/13\/8\/187"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2020,7,31]]},"references-count":48,"journal-issue":{"issue":"8","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2020,8]]}},"alternative-id":["a13080187"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/a13080187","relation":{},"ISSN":["1999-4893"],"issn-type":[{"type":"electronic","value":"1999-4893"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2020,7,31]]}}}