Incentives in Dominant Resource Fair Allocation under Dynamic Demands

Abstract: Every computer system -- from schedulers in clouds (e.g. Amazon) to computer networks to operating systems -- performs resource allocation across system users. The defacto allocation policies are max-min fairness (MMF) for single resources and dominant resource fairness (DRF) for multiple resources which guarantee properties like incentive compatibility, envy-freeness, and Pareto efficiency, assuming user demands are static (time-independent). However, in real-world systems, user demands are dynamic, i.e. time-dependant. As a result, there is now a fundamental mismatch between the goals of computer systems and the properties enabled by classic resource allocation policies. We aim to bridge this mismatch. When demands are dynamic, instant-by-instant MMF can be extremely unfair over longer periods of time, i.e. lead to unbalanced user allocations as previous allocations have no effect in the present. We consider a natural generalization of MMF and DRF for multiple resources and users with dynamic demands: this algorithm ensures that user allocations are as max-min fair as possible up to any time instant, given past allocations. This dynamic mechanism remains Pareto optimal and envy-free, but not incentive compatible. However, our results show that the possible increase in utility by misreporting is bounded and, since this can lead to significant decrease in overall useful allocation, this suggests that it is not a useful strategy. Our main result is to show that our dynamic DRF algorithm is $(1+\rho)$-incentive compatible, where $\rho$ quantifies the relative importance of a resource for different users; we show that this factor is tight even with only two resources. We also present a $3/2$ upper bound and a $\sqrt 2$ lower bound for incentive compatibility when there is only one resource. We also offer extensions for the case when users are weighted to prioritize them differently.