Gerd Breiter

Portable Cloud Services Using TOSCA

For cloud services to be portable, their management must also be portable to the targeted environment, as must the application components themselves. Here, the authors show how plans in the Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications (TOSCA) can enable portability of these operational aspects.

The role of ontologies in autonomic computing systems

The goal of IBMs autonomic computing strategy is to deliver information technology environments with improved self-management capabilities, such as self-healing, self-protection, self-optimization, and self-configuration. Data correlation and inference technologies can be used as core components to build autonomic computing systems. They can also be used to perform automated and continuous analysis of enterprise-wide event data based upon user-defined configurable rules, such as those intended for detecting threats or system failures. Furthermore, they may trigger corrective actions for protecting or healing the system. In this paper, we discuss the use of ontologies as a high-level, expressive, conceptual modeling approach for describing the knowledge upon which the processing of a correlation engine is based. The introduction of explicit models of state-based information technology resources into the correlation technology approach allows the construction of autonomic computing systems that are capable of dealing with policy-based goals on a higher abstraction level. We demonstrate some of the benefits of this approach by applying it to a particular IBM implementation, the eAutomation correlation engine.

Using a utility computing framework to develop utility systems

In this paper we describe a utility computing framework, consisting of a component model, a methodology, and a set of tools and common services for building utility computing systems. This framework facilitates the creation of new utility computing systems by providing a set of common functions, as well as a set of standard interfaces for those components that are specialized. It also provides a methodology and tools to assemble and re-use resource provisioning and management functions used to support new services with possibly different requirements. We demonstrate the benefits of the framework by describing two sample systems: a life-science utility computing service designed and implemented using the framework, and an on-line gaming utility computing service designed in compliance with the framework.

Life cycle and characteristics of services in the world of cloud computing

The emerging style of cloud computing provides applications, data, and information technology resources as services of a network. The cloud services approach focuses on a positive user experience while shielding the user from the complexity of the underlying technology. Each cloud service progresses through a well-defined life cycle: The cloud service provider defines the cloud services to be offered and exposes them via a service catalog; service requesters instantiate the services, which are managed against a set of servicelevel agreements; and finally the cloud service is destroyed when it is no longer needed. This paper describes this life cycle and explains the relationship of managing the life cycle of cloud services to traditional ITILt (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) processes as they are present in many data centers today. Furthermore, this paper elaborates on ensembles that provide the hardware infrastructure required to optimally support such flexible and massively scalable cloud services. An ensemble is an autonomically managed pool of like resources that exposes only virtualized resources while hiding the physical infrastructure. This approach allows growing the physical infrastructure with very little or no incremental administration costs.

A Framework for Controlling and Managing Hybrid Cloud Service Integration

In this paper, we first describe the challenges and pain points of adopting off-premise cloud-based computing services by enterprise users. To address these challenges, we have developed a hybrid cloud architectural framework for controlling and managing network of integrated computing services in on- and off-premise cloud environments. We identify three types of integration patterns that are commonly observed and describe support in the hybrid cloud framework for such patterns. The framework allows creation, modification, and management of integrated hybrid cloud services. Using this framework, we describe how solutions can be designed for policy-based access to cloud services from on-premise environments and for policy-based secure access to on premise data from off-premise cloud based services. The framework offers capabilities for (i) on-demand capacity expansion or cloud-bursting, (ii) service composition and management across multiple cloud domains, (iii) unification and customization of service offerings from multiple cloud service providers, (iv) seamless integration of common workload management services such monitoring, metering, and security, and (v) unified governance of IT operation across the hybrid cloud. We then describe a realization of this architecture that has served as the basis of IBMs hybrid cloud solution offerings and describe how the hybrid cloud framework described here mitigates some of cloud adoption risks and lowers or eliminates the inhibitors.

Cloud Computing — An Industry Perspective

Abstract Cloud computing is a new way in which IT is provided and consumed, enabling a gain in flexibility and cost-efficiency. In this paper, we give an industry perspective on cloud computing, discussing both consumer aspects as well as provider aspects that go along with that phenomenon. We present cloud computing as an evolutionary step based on advances in technology and economy, and in essence as the industrialization of IT. We will have a closer look at the concept of cloud services, including aspect like service templates, or service lifecycle, and we present an architecture enabling the efficient management of a cloud. Finally, we elaborate on aspects such as security and trust as well as standardization. Zusammenfassung Cloud Computing ist eine neue Art und Weise, IT flexibler und kosteneffizienter zu nutzen. In diesem Arikel betrachten wir Cloud Computing von Kunden- und Anbieterseite unter industriellen Gesichtspunkten als den nächsten Schritt in der Evolution von IT, bzw. der Industrialisierung von IT. Wir betrachten das Konzept von Cloud Services, Service Templates und deren Lebenszyklus und wir präsentieren eine Architektur zum effizienten Management von Clouds. Darüber hinaus betrachten wir Aspekte wie Sicherheit im Rahmen von Cloud Computing sowie Standardisierung.

Die weiteren Aussichten — wolkig!

ZusammenfassungCloud Computing und die Transformation des Rechenzentrums. In der heutigen globalisierten Welt müssen Unternehmen aller Bereiche sehr flexibel auf Veränderungen in ihrem Geschäftsumfeld reagieren können. Effektive und effiziente Unterstützung durch die entsprechenden IT-Services ist dabei von entscheidender Bedeutung. Doch diese Forderung zieht in vielen Fällen (r)evolutionäre Veränderungen im Rechenzentrum nach sich. Der technologische Fortschritt in den letzten Jahren hat viele fundamentale Änderungen im Geschäftsprozess und im Rechenzentrum möglich gemacht. Gleichzeitig hat jedoch die Komplexität in den Rechenzentren dramatisch zugenommen. Wie kann Cloud Computing dazu beitragen, mit diesen Herausforderungen umzugehen?