Gabor Kecskemeti

An SLA-based resource virtualization approach for on-demand service provision

Cloud computing is a newly emerged research infrastructure that builds on the latest achievements of diverse research areas, such as Grid computing, Service-oriented computing, business processes and virtualization. In this paper we present an architecture for SLA-based resource virtualization that provides an extensive solution for executing user applications in Clouds. This work represents the first attempt to combine SLA-based resource negotiations with virtualized resources in terms of on-demand service provision resulting in a holistic virtualization approach. The architecture description focuses on three topics: agreement negotiation, service brokering and deployment using virtualization. The contribution is also demonstrated with a real-world case study.

An interoperable and self-adaptive approach for SLA-based service virtualization in heterogeneous Cloud environments

Cloud computing is a newly emerged computing infrastructure that builds on the latest achievements of diverse research areas, such as Grid computing, Service-oriented computing, business process management and virtualization. An important characteristic of Cloud-based services is the provision of non-functional guarantees in the form of Service Level Agreements (SLAs), such as guarantees on execution time or price. However, due to system malfunctions, changing workload conditions, hard- and software failures, established SLAs can be violated. In order to avoid costly SLA violations, flexible and adaptive SLA attainment strategies are needed. In this paper we present a self-manageable architecture for SLA-based service virtualization that provides a way to ease interoperable service executions in a diverse, heterogeneous, distributed and virtualized world of services. We demonstrate in this paper that the combination of negotiation, brokering and deployment using SLA-aware extensions and autonomic computing principles are required for achieving reliable and efficient service operation in distributed environments. ? Heterogeneous Cloud environments need business-oriented autonomic service executions. ? A novel approach called Service-level agreement-based Service Virtualization. ? Built on three areas: agreement negotiation, brokering and service deployment. ? Principles of autonomic computing are used to cope with failures in Clouds. ? Validated in a simulation environment using a biochemical application.

EDGeS: Bridging EGEE to BOINC and XtremWeb

Desktop Grids, such as XtremWeb and BOINC, and Service Grids, such as EGEE, are two different approaches for science communities to gather computing power from a large number of computing resources. Nevertheless, little work has been done to combine these two Grid technologies in order to establish a seamless and vast Grid resource pool. In this paper we present the EGEE Service Grid, the BOINC and XtremWeb Desktop Grids. Then, we present the EDGeS solution to bridge the EGEE Service Grid with the BOINC and XtremWeb Desktop Grids.

An approach for virtual appliance distribution for service deployment

Fulfilling a service request in highly dynamic service environments may require deploying a service. Therefore, the effectiveness of service deployment systems affects initial service response times. On Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud systems deployable services are encapsulated in virtual appliances. Services are deployed by instantiating virtual machines with their virtual appliances. The virtual machine instantiation process is highly dependent on the size and availability of the virtual appliance that is maintained by service developers. This article proposes an automated virtual appliance creation service that aids the service developers to create efficiently deployable virtual appliances - in former systems this task was carried out manually by the developer. We present an algorithm that decomposes these appliances in order to replicate the common virtual appliance parts in IaaS systems. These parts are used to reduce the deployment time of the service by rebuilding the virtual appliance of the service on the deployment target site. With the prototype implementation of the proposed algorithms we demonstrate the decomposition and appliance rebuilding algorithms on a complex web service.

Multi-layered monitoring and adaptation

Service-based applications have become more and more multi-layered in nature, as we tend to build software as a service on top of infrastructure as a service. Most existing SOA monitoring and adaptation techniques address layer-specific issues. These techniques, if used in isolation, cannot deal with real-world domains, where changes in one layer often affect other layers, and information from multiple layers is essential in truly understanding problems and in developing comprehensive solutions. In this paper we propose a framework that integrates layer specific monitoring and adaptation techniques, and enables multi-layered control loops in service-based systems. The proposed approach is evaluated on a medical imaging procedure for Computed Tomography (CT) Scans, an e-Health scenario characterized by strong dependencies between the software layer and infrastructural resources.

Enhancing Federated Cloud Management with an Integrated Service Monitoring Approach

Cloud Computing enables the construction and the provisioning of virtualized service-based applications in a simple and cost effective outsourcing to dynamic service environments. Cloud Federations envisage a distributed, heterogeneous environment consisting of various cloud infrastructures by aggregating different IaaS provider capabilities coming from both the commercial and the academic area. In this paper, we introduce a federated cloud management solution that operates the federation through utilizing cloud-brokers for various IaaS providers. In order to enable an enhanced provider selection and inter-cloud service executions, an integrated monitoring approach is proposed which is capable of measuring the availability and reliability of the provisioned services in different providers. To this end, a minimal metric monitoring service has been designed and used together with a service monitoring solution to measure cloud performance. The transparent and cost effective operation on commercial clouds and the capability to simultaneously monitor both private and public clouds were the major design goals of this integrated cloud monitoring approach. Finally, the evaluation of our proposed solution is presented on different private IaaS systems participating in federations.

Autonomic SLA-Aware Service Virtualization for Distributed Systems

Cloud Computing builds on the latest achievements of diverse research areas, such as Grid Computing, Service-oriented computing, business processes and virtualization. Managing such heterogeneous environments requires sophisticated interoperation of adaptive coordinating components. In this paper we introduce an SLA-aware Service Virtualization architecture that provides non-functional guarantees in the form of Service Level Agreements and consists of a three-layered infrastructure including agreement negotiation, service brokering and on demand deployment. In order to avoid costly SLA violations, flexible and adaptive SLA attainment strategies are used with a failure propagation approach. We demonstrate the advantages of our proposed solution with a biochemical case study in a Cloud simulation environment.

Automatic Service Deployment Using Virtualisation

Manual deployment of the application usually requires expertise both about the underlying system and the application. Automatic service deployment can improve deployment significantly by using on-demand deployment and self-healing services. To support these features this paper describes an extension the globus workspace service. This extension includes creating virtual appliances for grid services, service deployment from a repository, and influencing the service schedules by altering execution planning services, candidate set generators or information systems.

Integrated Monitoring Approach for Seamless Service Provisioning in Federated Clouds

Cloud Computing offers simple and cost effective outsourcing in dynamic service environments, and allows the construction of service-based applications using virtualization. By aggregating the capabilities of various IaaS cloud providers, federated clouds can be built. Managing such a distributed, heterogeneous environment requires sophisticated interoperation of adaptive coordinating components. In this paper we introduce an integrated federated management and monitoring approach that enables autonomous service provisioning in federated clouds. In this architecture, cloud brokers manage the number and the location of the utilized virtual machines for the received service requests. In order to provide seamless service executions, a state of the art monitoring solution is proposed that supports cloud selection performed by the management layer of the architecture. Our solution is able to cope with highly dynamic service executions by federating heterogeneous cloud infrastructures in a transparent and autonomous manner.

DISSECT-CF: A simulator to foster energy-aware scheduling in infrastructure clouds

Abstract Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) systems offer on demand virtual infrastructures so reliably and flexibly that users expect a high service level. Therefore, even with regards to internal IaaS behaviour, production clouds only adopt novel ideas that are proven not to hinder established service levels. To analyse their expected behaviour, new ideas are often evaluated with simulators in production IaaS system-like scenarios. For instance, new research could enable collaboration amongst several layers of schedulers or could consider new optimisation objectives such as energy consumption. Unfortunately, current cloud simulators are hard to employ and they often have performance issues when several layers of schedulers interact in them. To target these issues, a new IaaS simulation framework (called DISSECT-CF) was designed. The new simulator’s foundation has the following goals: easy extensibility, support energy evaluation of IaaSs and to enable fast evaluation of many scheduling and IaaS internal behaviour related scenarios. In response to the requirements of such scenarios, the new simulator introduces concepts such as: a unified model for resource sharing and a new energy metering framework with hierarchical and indirect metering options. Then, the comparison of several simulated situations to real-life IaaS behaviour is used to validate the simulator’s functionality. Finally, a performance comparison is presented between DISSECT-CF and some currently available simulators.