A cloud provider selection scheme for cloud storage services

Abstract

This paper proposes a cloud provider selection scheme for cloud storage services to minimize the total cost of usage. The proposed scheme satisfies the user’s requirements using multiple cloud providers. The proposed scheme considers the time-dependent unavailability and multiple-user environment. The cloud provider selection problem is formulated as a linear programming problem. We evaluate the total cost of usage of our scheme for the various allowable numbers of cloud providers. Numerical results show that the proposed scheme with multiple cloud providers reduces the total cost of usage, compared to that with only one cloud provider. The total cost of usage is more reduced if the time-dependent scheme is used.