Title: A Game-Theoretic Approach for Runtime Capacity Allocation in MapReduce,
Abstract: Nowadays many companies have available large amounts of raw, unstructured
data. Among Big Data enabling technologies, a central place is held by the
MapReduce framework and, in particular, by its open source implementation,
Apache Hadoop. For cost effectiveness considerations, a common approach entails
sharing server clusters among multiple users. The underlying infrastructure
should provide every user with a fair share of computational resources,
ensuring that Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are met and avoiding wastes. In
this paper we consider two mathematical programming problems that model the
optimal allocation of computational resources in a Hadoop 2.x cluster with the
aim to develop new capacity allocation techniques that guarantee better
performance in shared data centers. Our goal is to get a substantial reduction
of power consumption while respecting the deadlines stated in the SLAs and
avoiding penalties associated with job rejections. The core of this approach is
a distributed algorithm for runtime capacity allocation, based on Game Theory
models and techniques, that mimics the MapReduce dynamics by means of
interacting players, namely the central Resource Manager and Class Managers.