Simplifying Multi-layer and Multi-tenant Support in OpenStack: The SACHER Use Case

Abstract

The majority of cloud computing deployment environments follow the typical service delivery models, i.e., Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), that provide specific functionalities to users depending on the service delivery layer and clear resource isolation among different tenants. However, in certain scenarios, such as the Cultural heritage one, it is often required to provide SaaS, IaaS and PaaS cross-functionality support to users and cross-tenant resource visibility among isolated tenants. In the CH scenario, for example, restorers and professionals may often need to connect and to share temporarily data among different tenants or to work with old customized software requiring the possibility to exploit specific management functionalities that are typically available not at the SaaS but at the IaaS or PaaS layers. This paper proposes a middleware called Registry that can provide additional functionalities to different user categories by joining the SaaS with the IaaS layer and that offers also multi-tenancy operations making private data available to certain project on-demand and enabling, in this way, cross-tenant data sharing. The Registry has been designed, developed and tested within the context of the SACHER project that provides a cloud-based infrastructure for the management of the cultural data lifecycle.