We study the scheduling decisions for handling deadline-constrained workflows in the context of planning customized virtual infrastructures in the cloud. We specifically focus on the effects of using different types of greediness in selecting cost-effective virtual machines for the tasks in an application's workflow graph. The profiling procedure followed demonstrates that for the widely used approach of the partial critical path algorithm a greedy version is preferred to a more stringent version under different stress conditions, from tight to loose deadlines. Representative topologies of workflow applications are used to generate sets of task graph scheduling problems. Monitoring the performance of the partial critical path algorithm with different types of greediness reveals which of the topologies tested are difficult to solve under various stress conditions. It turns out that an invalid outcome of a greedy version of the partial critical path algorithm is more susceptible to become valid via a final refinement cycle than a less greedy version. The procedure outlined in this paper will allow for a systematic study of a specific heuristic in a workflow scheduling method to increase its success in infrastructure planning under different deadline conditions and is proposed to be part of a general profiling framework. All four implementations of the IC-PCP algorithm used in this study as well as the data to produce the performance figures are available at https://bitbucket.org/uva-sne/ic-pcp-profiling/src/master.

This research has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreements 643963 (SWITCH project), 654182 (ENVRIPLUS project), 676247 (VRE4EIC project), 824068(ENVRI-FAIR project) and 825134(ARTICONF project).