The present invention includes a method for resource optimization of map/reduce computing in a computing cluster. The method can include receiving a computational problem for processing in a map/reduce module, subdividing the computational problem into a set of sub-problems and mapping a selection of the sub-problems in the set to respective nodes in a computing cluster, for example a cloud computing cluster, computing for a subset of the nodes in the computing cluster a required resource capacity of the subset of the nodes to process a mapped one of the sub-problems and an existing capacity of the subset of the nodes, and augmenting the existing capacity to an augmented capacity when the required resource capacity exceeds the existing capacity, and when a cost of augmenting the existing capacity to the augmented capacity does not exceed a penalty for breaching a service level agreement (SLA) for the subset of the nodes.