A revised discrete particle swarm optimization for cloud workflow scheduling

A cloud workflow system is a type of platform service which facilitates the automation of distributed applications based on the novel cloud infrastructure. Compared with grid environment, data transfer is a big overhead for cloud workflows due to the market-oriented business model in the cloud environments. In this paper, a Revised Discrete Particle Swarm Optimization (RDPSO) is proposed to schedule applications among cloud services that takes both data transmission cost and computation cost into account. Experiment is conducted with a set of workflow applications by varying their data communication costs and computation costs according to a cloud price model. Comparison is made on makespan and cost optimization ratio and the cost savings with RDPSO, the standard PSO and BRS (Best Resource Selection) algorithm. Experimental results show that the proposed RDPSO algorithm can achieve much more cost savings and better performance on makespan and cost optimization. © 2010 IEEE.