Efficient Task Scheduling in Cloud Computing: A Multiobjective Strategy Using Horse Herd–Squirrel Search Algorithm

Cloud computing (CC) is a technology that enables the delivery of IT services outside of the workplace. CC, on the other hand, has had several drawbacks. The task scheduling issue is taken as one of the important difficulties because a solid mapping between available resources and users’ activities is essential to reduce the execution time of users’ jobs (i.e., minimize makespan) and maximize resource utilization. Because the service provider must offer several customers’ benefits at distinct times and from distinct locations, task scheduling is indeed a serious challenge in CC. As a result, in the CC environment, these operations must be scheduled in a more dynamic and timely manner. The objective is to provide an enhanced task scheduling algorithm for allocating the task of the user to different computing resources. The major aim of the research work is to reduce the cost and the execution time as well as to improve the resource utilization of the task scheduling problem using the improved support vector machine (ISVM) and the optimization concept. The novel algorithm used here merges two familiar algorithms as squirrel search algorithm (SSA) and the horse herd optimization algorithm (HOA) leading to a new hybrid metaheuristic algorithm called the horse herd–squirrel search algorithm (HO–SSA). The developed HO–SSA assists in introducing a multiobjective optimization for efficiently handling task scheduling issues in the cloud sector. The proposed HO–SSA method for the task scheduling in CC model in terms of cost is 22.22%, 15.73%, and 38.74% better than SSA, HOA, and TSA, respectively. Similarly, the proposed HO–SSA method for the task scheduling in CC model with respect to energy is 9.68%, 5.35%, and 22.50% superior to SSA, HOA, and TSA, respectively. The proposed method outperformed the existing methods like SSA, HOA, and TSA in terms of cost, energy, degree of imbalance, makespan, speedup, and efficiency.