Jose Carrasco

SeaClouds: a European project on seamless management of multi-cloud applications

The adaptive management of complex applications deployed across multiple heterogeneous PaaS platforms is one of the problems that have emerged with the cloud revolution. The recently started EU research project SeaClouds aims at providing seamless adaptive multi-cloud management of complex applications by supporting the distribution, monitoring and migration of application modules over multiple heterogeneous PaaS platforms. We present the context, motivations and objectives of SeaClouds, its relation with other cloud initiatives, and its initial architecture.

Adaptive management of applications across multiple clouds: The SeaClouds Approach

How to deploy and manage, in an ecient and adaptive way, complex applications across multiple heterogeneous cloud platforms is one of the problems that have emerged with the cloud revolution. In this paper we present context, motivations and objectives of the EU research project SeaClouds, which aims at enabling a seamless adaptive multi-cloud management of complex applications by supporting the distribution, monitoring and migration of application modules over multiple heterogeneous cloud platforms. After positioning SeaClouds with respect to related cloud initiatives, we present the SeaClouds architecture and discuss some of its aspect, such as the use of the OASIS standard TOSCA and the compatibility with the OASIS CAMP initiative.

Bidimensional Cross-Cloud Management with TOSCA and Brooklyn

The diversity in the way different cloud providers offer their services, give their SLAs, present their QoS, support different technologies, etc., complicates the portability and interoperability of cloud applications, and favors vendor lock-in. Standards like TOSCA, and tools supporting them, have come to help in the provider-independent description of cloud applications. After the variety of proposed cross-cloud application management tools, we propose going one step further in the unification of cloud services with a deployment tool in which IaaS and PaaS services are integrated into a unified interface. We provide support for applications whose components are to be deployed on different providers, indistinctly using IaaS and PaaS services. The TOSCA standard is used to define a portable model describing the topology of the cloud applications and the required resources in an agnostic, and providers-and resources-independent way. We include in this paper some highlights on our implementation on Apache Brooklyn and present a non-trivial example that illustrates our approach.

Deployment over Heterogeneous Clouds with TOSCA and CAMP

Cloud Computing providers offer diverse services and capabilities, which can be used by end-users to compose heterogeneous contexts of multiple cloud platforms to deploy their applications, in accordance with the best offered capabilities. However, this is an ideal scenario, since cloud platforms are being conducted in an isolated way by presenting interoperability and portability restrictions. Each provider defines its own API, non-functional requirements, QoS, add-ons, etc., and developers are often locked-in a concrete cloud environment, hampering the integration of heterogeneous provider services to achieve cross-deployment. This work presents an approach to deploy cross-cloud applications by using standardisation efforts of design, management and deployment of cloud applications. Specifically, using mechanisms specified by the TOSCA and CAMP standards, we propose a methodology to describe the topology and distribution of modules of a cloud application and to deploy the inter-connected modules over heterogeneous clouds. We present our prototype TOMAT, which supports the automatic distribution of cloud applications over multiple providers.

SeaClouds: An Open Reference Architecture for Multi-cloud Governance

We present the open reference architecture of the SeaClouds solution. It aims at enabling a seamless adaptive multi-cloud management of complex applications by supporting the distribution, monitoring and reconfiguration of app modules over heterogeneous cloud providers.

Towards a Flexible Deployment of Multi-cloud Applications Based on TOSCA and CAMP

Cloud Computing platforms offer diverse services and capabilities with own features. Hence, the provider services could be used by end users to compose a heterogeneous context of multiple cloud platforms in order to deploy their cloud applications made up of a set of modules, according to the best capabilities of the cloud providers. However, this is an ideal scenario, since the cloud platforms are being conducted in an isolated way by presenting many interoperability and portability restrictions, which complicate the integration of diverse provider services to achieve an heterogeneous deployment of multi-cloud applications. In this ongoing work, we present an approach based on model transformation to deploy multi-cloud applications by reusing standardization efforts related to the management and deployment of cloud applications. Specifically, using mechanisms specified by both standards, TOSCA and CAMP, we propose a methodology to describe the topology and distribution of modules of a cloud application and to deploy the interconnected modules over heterogeneous clouds. We illustrate our idea using a running example.

Trans-cloud: CAMP/TOSCA-based bidimensional cross-cloud

Abstract The diversity in the way in which different cloud providers offer their services, give their SLAs, present their QoS, or support different technologies complicates the portability and interoperability of cloud applications, and favors vendor lock-in. Trying to solve these issues, we have recently witnessed the proposal of unified APIs for IaaS services, unified APIs for PaaS services, and a variety of cross-cloud application management tools. We go one step further in the unification of cloud services, building on the TOSCA and CAMP standards, with a proposal in which the management of IaaS and PaaS services, possibly offered by different providers, are integrated into a unified interface. The TOSCA standard is used for the definition of portable models describing the topology of cloud applications and the required resources in an agnostic, providers-and-resources-independent way. Based on the CAMP standard, we abstract from the particularities of specific providers. Indeed, to change the service on which any of the modules of an application is to be deployed, whether it be IaaS or PaaS, we just need to change its target location by picking from the catalog of supported locations. We provide insights into our implementation on Apache Brooklyn, present a non-trivial case study that illustrates our approach, and show some experimental results.

Runtime Migration of Applications in a Trans-Cloud Environment

Making an application independent of the cloud provider where it is going to be deployed is still an open issue. In fact, cloud agnostic software development still presents important challenges to be solved, and one of them is the problem of runtime migration of components already deployed on a given provider to a different one. Even more difficult is dealing with the interoperability issues when the migration also implies a change of service level (i.e., from IaaS to PaaS, or vice versa). This paper presents an algorithm for the parallel migration of cloud applications. The migration is performed component-wise, in the sense that each component of the application to be migrated may be deployed on a specific service on a specific provider, and be moved to a different provider, possibly changing the service level between IaaS and PaaS of each of them individually. Since the migration of components with state pose additional difficulties, we only consider stateless components. Our solution relies on three of the key ingredients of the trans-cloud approach: a unified API, agnostic topology descriptions, and mechanisms for the independent specification of providers. We show how our approach solves some of the current interoperability and portability issues of cloud environments, and allows us to provide a solution for migration. We present an implementation of our proposed solution and illustrate it with a case study and experimental results.

Component Migration in a Trans-cloud Environment

The trans-cloud approach has recently been proposed to simplify the development and operation of cloud applications, and to minimize the lock-in problem. The three key ingredients of the trans-cloud approach are: agnostic topology descriptions, a unified API, and mechanisms for the independent specification of providers’ services. We build on the trans-cloud mechanisms to propose a solution for the migration of stateless cloud components at runtime. In the context of our trans-cloud tool, we propose an algorithm for the migration of cloud applications’ components between different providers, possibly changing their service levels between IaaS and PaaS. We present an implementation of our proposed solution, and illustrate it with a case study and experimental results.

Towards a Unified Management of Applications on Heterogeneous Clouds

The diversity in the way cloud providers offer their services, give their SLAs, present their QoS, or support different technologies, makes very difficult the portability and interoperability of cloud applications, and favours the well-known vendor lock-in problem. We propose a model to describe cloud applications and the required resources in an agnostic, and providers- and resources-independent way, in which individual application modules, and entire applications, may be re-deployed using different services without modification. To support this model, and after the proposal of a variety of cross-cloud application management tools by different authors, we propose going one step further in the unification of cloud services with a management approach in which IaaS and PaaS services are integrated into a unified interface. We provide support for deploying applications whose components are distributed on different cloud providers, indistinctly using IaaS and PaaS services.