Scheduling methods using soft and hard service level considerations

A computer implemented method for computer workload scheduling comprising:

• receiving with a processor a job along with a service level agreement (SLA) cost function, a deadline and an importance indication of the deadline wherein the SLA cost function includes both a revenue function R(x) and an SLA penalty cost function C(x) defined by
• C(x)=R0−R(x);
• where R0 is the maximum revenue possible under the SLA;
• determining a cost based scheduling policy (CBS) priority for job i as:
• pi(t)∫0∞a(τ)·ci(t+τ)dt−ci(t)
• where c(t) is a cost, τ is a wait time and a(τ) is an exponential function;
• determining a cost of a deadline hint from the deadline importance wherein a high hint cost is associated with a strict deadline observation and a low hint cost is associated with a deadline observation that is not strict, where a high hint cost makes the deadline a high priority and vice versa;
• determining a new cost wherein the new cost is the sum of the service level agreement cost and the deadline hint cost;
• scheduling the job through the effect of a cost based scheduler wherein the cost based scheduler uses the new cost as input to schedule the job;
• and
• executing the job so scheduled on the computer.