360 research outputs found

    Automated and dynamic multi-level negotiation framework applied to an efficient cloud provisioning

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    L’approvisionnement du Cloud est le processus de déploiement et de gestion des applications sur les infrastructures publiques du Cloud. Il est de plus en plus utilisé car il permet aux fournisseurs de services métiers de se concentrer sur leurs activités sans avoir à gérer et à investir dans l’infrastructure. Il comprend deux niveaux d’interaction : (1) entre les utilisateurs finaux et les fournisseurs de services pour l’approvisionnement des applications, et (2) entre les fournisseurs de services et les fournisseurs de ressources pour l’approvisionnement des ressources virtuelles. L’environnement Cloud est devenu un marché complexe où tout fournisseur veut maximiser son profit monétaire et où les utilisateurs finaux recherchent les services les plus efficaces tout en minimisant leurs coûts. Avec la croissance de la concurrence dans le Cloud, les fournisseurs de services métiers doivent assurer un approvisionnement efficace qui maximise la satisfaction de la clientèle et optimise leurs profits.Ainsi, les fournisseurs et les utilisateurs doivent être satisfaits en dépit de leurs besoins contradictoires. La négociation est une solution prometteuse qui permet de résoudre les conflits en comblant le gap entre les capacités des fournisseurs et les besoins des utilisateurs. Intuitivement, la négociation automatique des contrats (SLA) permet d’aboutir à un compromis qui satisfait les deux parties. Cependant, pour être efficace, la négociation automatique doit considérer les propriétés de l’approvisionnement du Cloud et les complexités liées à la dynamicité (dynamicité de la disponibilité des ressources, dynamicité des prix). En fait ces critères ont un impact important sur le succès de la négociation. Les principales contributions de cette thèse répondant au défi de la négociation multi-niveau dans un contexte dynamique sont les suivantes: (1) Nous proposons un modèle de négociateur générique qui considère la nature dynamique de l’approvisionnement du Cloud et son impact potentiel sur les résultats décisionnels. Ensuite, nous construisons un cadre de négociation multicouche fondé sur ce modèle en l’instanciant entre les couches du Cloud. Le cadre comprend des agents négociateurs en communication avec les modules en relation avec la qualité et le prix du service à fournir (le planificateur, le moniteur, le prospecteur de marché). (2) Nous proposons une approche de négociation bilatérale entre les utilisateurs finaux et les fournisseurs de service basée sur une approche d’approvisionnement existante. Les stratégies de négociation sont basées sur la communication avec les modules d’approvisionnement (le planificateur et l’approvisionneur de machines virtuelles) afin d’optimiser les bénéfices du fournisseur de service et de maximiser la satisfaction du client. (3) Afin de maximiser le nombre de clients, nous proposons une approche de négociation adaptative et simultanée comme extension de la négociation bilatérale. Nous proposons d’exploiter les changements de charge de travail en termes de disponibilité et de tarification des ressources afin de renégocier simultanément avec plusieurs utilisateurs non acceptés (c’est-à-dire rejetés lors de la première session de négociation) avant la création du contrat SLA. (4) Afin de gérer toute violation possible de SLA, nous proposons une approche proactive de renégociation après l’établissement de SLA. La renégociation est lancée lors de la détection d’un événement inattendu (par exemple, une panne de ressources) pendant le processus d’approvisionnement. Les stratégies de renégociation proposées visent à minimiser la perte de profit pour le fournisseur et à assurer la continuité du service pour le consommateur. Les approches proposées sont mises en œuvre et les expériences prouvent les avantages d’ajouter la (re)négociation au processus d’approvisionnement. L’utilisation de la (re)négociation améliore le bénéfice du fournisseur, le nombre de demandes acceptées et la satisfaction du client.Cloud provisioning is the process of deployment and management of applications on public cloud infrastructures. Cloud provisioning is used increasingly because it enables business providers to focus on their business without having to manage and invest in infrastructure. Cloud provisioning includes two levels of interaction: (1) between end-users and business providers for application provisioning; and (2) between business providers and resource providers for virtual resource provisioning.The cloud market nowadays is a complex environment where business providers need to maximize their monetary profit, and where end-users look for the most efficient services with the lowest prices. With the growth of competition in the cloud, business providers must ensure efficient provisioning that maximizes customer satisfaction and optimizes the providers’ profit. So, both providers and users must be satisfied in spite of their conflicting needs. Negotiation is an appealing solution to solve conflicts and bridge the gap between providers’ capabilities and users’ requirements. Intuitively, automated Service Level Agreement (SLA) negotiation helps in reaching an agreement that satisfies both parties. However, to be efficient, automated negotiation should consider the properties of cloud provisioning mainly the two interaction levels, and complexities related to dynamicity (e.g., dynamically-changing resource availability, dynamic pricing, dynamic market factors related to offers and demands), which greatly impact the success of the negotiation. The main contributions of this thesis tackling the challenge of multi-level negotiation in a dynamic context are as follows: (1) We propose a generic negotiator model that considers the dynamic nature of cloud provisioning and its potential impact on the decision-making outcome. Then, we build a multi-layer negotiation framework built upon that model by instantiating it among Cloud layers. The framework includes negotiator agents. These agents are in communication with the provisioning modules that have an impact on the quality and the price of the service to be provisioned (e.g, the scheduler, the monitor, the market prospector). (2) We propose a bilateral negotiation approach between end-users and business providers extending an existing provisioning approach. The proposed decision-making strategies for negotiation are based on communication with the provisioning modules (the scheduler and the VM provisioner) in order to optimize the business provider’s profit and maximize customer satisfaction. (3) In order to maximize the number of clients, we propose an adaptive and concurrent negotiation approach as an extension of the bilateral negotiation. We propose to harness the workload changes in terms of resource availability and pricing in order to renegotiate simultaneously with multiple non-accepted users (i.e., rejected during the first negotiation session) before the establishment of the SLA. (4) In order to handle any potential SLA violation, we propose a proactive renegotiation approach after SLA establishment. The renegotiation is launched upon detecting an unexpected event (e.g., resource failure) during the provisioning process. The proposed renegotiation decision-making strategies aim to minimize the loss in profit for the provider and to ensure the continuity of the service for the consumer. The proposed approaches are implemented and experiments prove the benefits of adding (re)negotiation to the provisioning process. The use of (re)negotiation improves the provider’s profit, the number of accepted requests, and the client’s satisfaction

    Automated and dynamic multi-level negotiation framework applied to an efficient cloud provisioning

    Get PDF
    L’approvisionnement du Cloud est le processus de déploiement et de gestion des applications sur les infrastructures publiques du Cloud. Il est de plus en plus utilisé car il permet aux fournisseurs de services métiers de se concentrer sur leurs activités sans avoir à gérer et à investir dans l’infrastructure. Il comprend deux niveaux d’interaction : (1) entre les utilisateurs finaux et les fournisseurs de services pour l’approvisionnement des applications, et (2) entre les fournisseurs de services et les fournisseurs de ressources pour l’approvisionnement des ressources virtuelles. L’environnement Cloud est devenu un marché complexe où tout fournisseur veut maximiser son profit monétaire et où les utilisateurs finaux recherchent les services les plus efficaces tout en minimisant leurs coûts. Avec la croissance de la concurrence dans le Cloud, les fournisseurs de services métiers doivent assurer un approvisionnement efficace qui maximise la satisfaction de la clientèle et optimise leurs profits.Ainsi, les fournisseurs et les utilisateurs doivent être satisfaits en dépit de leurs besoins contradictoires. La négociation est une solution prometteuse qui permet de résoudre les conflits en comblant le gap entre les capacités des fournisseurs et les besoins des utilisateurs. Intuitivement, la négociation automatique des contrats (SLA) permet d’aboutir à un compromis qui satisfait les deux parties. Cependant, pour être efficace, la négociation automatique doit considérer les propriétés de l’approvisionnement du Cloud et les complexités liées à la dynamicité (dynamicité de la disponibilité des ressources, dynamicité des prix). En fait ces critères ont un impact important sur le succès de la négociation. Les principales contributions de cette thèse répondant au défi de la négociation multi-niveau dans un contexte dynamique sont les suivantes: (1) Nous proposons un modèle de négociateur générique qui considère la nature dynamique de l’approvisionnement du Cloud et son impact potentiel sur les résultats décisionnels. Ensuite, nous construisons un cadre de négociation multicouche fondé sur ce modèle en l’instanciant entre les couches du Cloud. Le cadre comprend des agents négociateurs en communication avec les modules en relation avec la qualité et le prix du service à fournir (le planificateur, le moniteur, le prospecteur de marché). (2) Nous proposons une approche de négociation bilatérale entre les utilisateurs finaux et les fournisseurs de service basée sur une approche d’approvisionnement existante. Les stratégies de négociation sont basées sur la communication avec les modules d’approvisionnement (le planificateur et l’approvisionneur de machines virtuelles) afin d’optimiser les bénéfices du fournisseur de service et de maximiser la satisfaction du client. (3) Afin de maximiser le nombre de clients, nous proposons une approche de négociation adaptative et simultanée comme extension de la négociation bilatérale. Nous proposons d’exploiter les changements de charge de travail en termes de disponibilité et de tarification des ressources afin de renégocier simultanément avec plusieurs utilisateurs non acceptés (c’est-à-dire rejetés lors de la première session de négociation) avant la création du contrat SLA. (4) Afin de gérer toute violation possible de SLA, nous proposons une approche proactive de renégociation après l’établissement de SLA. La renégociation est lancée lors de la détection d’un événement inattendu (par exemple, une panne de ressources) pendant le processus d’approvisionnement. Les stratégies de renégociation proposées visent à minimiser la perte de profit pour le fournisseur et à assurer la continuité du service pour le consommateur. Les approches proposées sont mises en œuvre et les expériences prouvent les avantages d’ajouter la (re)négociation au processus d’approvisionnement. L’utilisation de la (re)négociation améliore le bénéfice du fournisseur, le nombre de demandes acceptées et la satisfaction du client.Cloud provisioning is the process of deployment and management of applications on public cloud infrastructures. Cloud provisioning is used increasingly because it enables business providers to focus on their business without having to manage and invest in infrastructure. Cloud provisioning includes two levels of interaction: (1) between end-users and business providers for application provisioning; and (2) between business providers and resource providers for virtual resource provisioning.The cloud market nowadays is a complex environment where business providers need to maximize their monetary profit, and where end-users look for the most efficient services with the lowest prices. With the growth of competition in the cloud, business providers must ensure efficient provisioning that maximizes customer satisfaction and optimizes the providers’ profit. So, both providers and users must be satisfied in spite of their conflicting needs. Negotiation is an appealing solution to solve conflicts and bridge the gap between providers’ capabilities and users’ requirements. Intuitively, automated Service Level Agreement (SLA) negotiation helps in reaching an agreement that satisfies both parties. However, to be efficient, automated negotiation should consider the properties of cloud provisioning mainly the two interaction levels, and complexities related to dynamicity (e.g., dynamically-changing resource availability, dynamic pricing, dynamic market factors related to offers and demands), which greatly impact the success of the negotiation. The main contributions of this thesis tackling the challenge of multi-level negotiation in a dynamic context are as follows: (1) We propose a generic negotiator model that considers the dynamic nature of cloud provisioning and its potential impact on the decision-making outcome. Then, we build a multi-layer negotiation framework built upon that model by instantiating it among Cloud layers. The framework includes negotiator agents. These agents are in communication with the provisioning modules that have an impact on the quality and the price of the service to be provisioned (e.g, the scheduler, the monitor, the market prospector). (2) We propose a bilateral negotiation approach between end-users and business providers extending an existing provisioning approach. The proposed decision-making strategies for negotiation are based on communication with the provisioning modules (the scheduler and the VM provisioner) in order to optimize the business provider’s profit and maximize customer satisfaction. (3) In order to maximize the number of clients, we propose an adaptive and concurrent negotiation approach as an extension of the bilateral negotiation. We propose to harness the workload changes in terms of resource availability and pricing in order to renegotiate simultaneously with multiple non-accepted users (i.e., rejected during the first negotiation session) before the establishment of the SLA. (4) In order to handle any potential SLA violation, we propose a proactive renegotiation approach after SLA establishment. The renegotiation is launched upon detecting an unexpected event (e.g., resource failure) during the provisioning process. The proposed renegotiation decision-making strategies aim to minimize the loss in profit for the provider and to ensure the continuity of the service for the consumer. The proposed approaches are implemented and experiments prove the benefits of adding (re)negotiation to the provisioning process. The use of (re)negotiation improves the provider’s profit, the number of accepted requests, and the client’s satisfaction

    Service Level Agreements for Communication Networks: A Survey

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    Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is being provided to the variety of end-users demands, thereby providing a better and improved management of services is crucial. Therefore, Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are essential and play a key role to manage the provided services among the network entities. This survey identifies the state of the art covering concepts, approaches and open problems of the SLAs establishment, deployment and management. This paper is organised in a way that the reader can access a variety of proposed SLA methods and models addressed and provides an overview of the SLA actors and elements. It also describes SLAs' characteristics and objectives. SLAs' existing methodologies are explained and categorised followed by the Service Quality Categories (SQD) and Quality-Based Service Descriptions (QSD). SLA modelling and architectures are discussed, and open research problems and future research directions are introduced. The establishment of a reliable, safe and QoE-aware computer networking needs a group of services that goes beyond pure networking services. Therefore, within the paper this broader set of services are taken into consideration and for each Service Level Objective (SLO) the related services domains will be indicated. The purpose of this survey is to identify existing research gaps in utilising SLA elements to develop a generic methodology, considering all quality parameters beyond the Quality of Service (QoS) and what must or can be taken into account to define, establish and deploy an SLA. This study is still an active research on how to specify and develop an SLA to achieve the win-win agreements among all actors.Comment: 25 Pages, 4 Figure

    Service Level Agreements for Communication Networks: A Survey

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    Abstract. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is being provided to the variety of endusers demands, thereby providing a better and improved management of services is crucial. Therefore, Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are essential and play a key role to manage the provided services among the network entities. This survey identifies the state of the art covering concepts, approaches and open problems of the SLAs establishment, deployment and management. This paper is organised in a way that the reader can access a variety of proposed SLA methods and models addressed and provides an overview of the SLA actors and elements. It also describes SLAs’ characteristics and objectives. SLAs’ existing methodologies are explained and categorised followed by the Service Quality Categories (SQD) and Quality-Based Service Descriptions (QSD). SLA modelling and architectures are discussed, and open research problems and future research directions are introduced. The establishment of a reliable, safe and QoE-aware computer networking needs a group of services that goes beyond pure networking services. Therefore, within the paper this broader set of services are taken into consideration and for each Service Level Objective (SLO) the related services domains will be indicated. The purpose of this survey is to identify existing research gaps in utilising SLA elements to develop a generic methodology, considering all quality parameters beyond the Quality of Service (QoS) and what must or can be taken into account to define, establish and deploy an SLA. This study is still an active research on how to specify and develop an SLA to achieve the win-win agreements among all actors.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

    Generic Methods for Adaptive Management of Service Level Agreements in Cloud Computing

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    The adoption of cloud computing to build and deliver application services has been nothing less than phenomenal. Service oriented systems are being built using disparate sources composed of web services, replicable datastores, messaging, monitoring and analytics functions and more. Clouds augment these systems with advanced features such as high availability, customer affinity and autoscaling on a fair pay-per-use cost model. The challenge lies in using the utility paradigm of cloud beyond its current exploit. Major trends show that multi-domain synergies are creating added-value service propositions. This raises two questions on autonomic behaviors, which are specifically ad- dressed by this thesis. The first question deals with mechanism design that brings the customer and provider(s) together in the procurement process. The purpose is that considering customer requirements for quality of service and other non functional properties, service dependencies need to be efficiently resolved and legally stipulated. The second question deals with effective management of cloud infrastructures such that commitments to customers are fulfilled and the infrastructure is optimally operated in accordance with provider policies. This thesis finds motivation in Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to answer these questions. The role of SLAs is explored as instruments to build and maintain trust in an economy where services are increasingly interdependent. The thesis takes a wholesome approach and develops generic methods to automate SLA lifecycle management, by identifying and solving relevant research problems. The methods afford adaptiveness in changing business landscape and can be localized through policy based controls. A thematic vision that emerges from this work is that business models, services and the delivery technology are in- dependent concepts that can be finely knitted together by SLAs. Experimental evaluations support the message of this thesis, that exploiting SLAs as foundations for market innovation and infrastructure governance indeed holds win-win opportunities for both cloud customers and cloud providers

    Contributions to Service Level Agreement (SLA), Negotiation and Monitoring in Cloud Computing

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    Cloud computing is a dynamic field of research, as the latest advances in the cloud computing applications have led to development of a plethora of cloud services in the areas of software, hardware, storage, internet of things connected to the cloud, and 5G supported by the cloud networks. Due to ever increasing developments and the subsequent emergence of a wide range of cloud services, a cloud market was created with cloud providers and customers seeking to buy the cloud services. With the expansion of the cloud market and the presence of a virtual environment in which cloud services are provided and managed, the face to-face meetings between customers and cloud providers is almost impossible, and the negotiation over the cloud services using the state-of-the-art autonomous negotiation agents has been theorized and researched by several researchers in the field of cloud computing, however, the solutions offered by literature are less applicable in the real-time cloud market with the evolving nature of services and customers’ requirements. Therefore, this study aimed to develop the solutions addressing issues in relation to negotiation of cloud services leading to the development of a service-level agreement (SLA), and monitoring of the terms and conditions specified in the SLA. We proposed the autonomous service-level framework supported by the autonomous agents for negotiating over the cloud services on behalf of the cloud providers and customers. The proposed framework contained gathering, filtering, negotiation and SLA monitoring functions, which enhanced its applicability in the real-time cloud market environment. Gathering and filtering stages facilitated the effectiveness of the negotiation phase based on the requirements of customers and cloud services available in the cloud market. The negotiation phase was executed by the selection of autonomous agents, leading to the creation of an SLA with metrics agreed upon between the cloud provider and the customer. Autonomous agents improved the efficiency of negotiation over multiple issues by creating the SLA within a short time and benefiting both parties involved in the negation phase. Rubinstein’s Alternating Offers Protocol was found to be effective in drafting the automated SLA solutions in the challenging environment of the cloud market. We also aimed to apply various autonomous agents to build the new algorithms which can be used to create novel negotiation strategies for addressing the issues in SLAs in cloud computing. The monitoring approach based on the CloudSim tool was found to be an effective strategy for detecting violations against the SLA, which can be an important contribution to building effective monitoring solutions for improving the quality of services in the cloud market

    Business-driven resource allocation and management for data centres in cloud computing markets

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    Cloud Computing markets arise as an efficient way to allocate resources for the execution of tasks and services within a set of geographically dispersed providers from different organisations. Client applications and service providers meet in a market and negotiate for the sales of services by means of the signature of a Service Level Agreement that contains the Quality of Service terms that the Cloud provider has to guarantee by managing properly its resources. Current implementations of Cloud markets suffer from a lack of information flow between the negotiating agents, which sell the resources, and the resource managers that allocate the resources to fulfil the agreed Quality of Service. This thesis establishes an intermediate layer between the market agents and the resource managers. In consequence, agents can perform accurate negotiations by considering the status of the resources in their negotiation models, and providers can manage their resources considering both the performance and the business objectives. This thesis defines a set of policies for the negotiation and enforcement of Service Level Agreements. Such policies deal with different Business-Level Objectives: maximisation of the revenue, classification of clients, trust and reputation maximisation, and risk minimisation. This thesis demonstrates the effectiveness of such policies by means of fine-grained simulations. A pricing model may be influenced by many parameters. The weight of such parameters within the final model is not always known, or it can change as the market environment evolves. This thesis models and evaluates how the providers can self-adapt to changing environments by means of genetic algorithms. Providers that rapidly adapt to changes in the environment achieve higher revenues than providers that do not. Policies are usually conceived for the short term: they model the behaviour of the system by considering the current status and the expected immediate after their application. This thesis defines and evaluates a trust and reputation system that enforces providers to consider the impact of their decisions in the long term. The trust and reputation system expels providers and clients with dishonest behaviour, and providers that consider the impact of their reputation in their actions improve on the achievement of their Business-Level Objectives. Finally, this thesis studies the risk as the effects of the uncertainty over the expected outcomes of cloud providers. The particularities of cloud appliances as a set of interconnected resources are studied, as well as how the risk is propagated through the linked nodes. Incorporating risk models helps providers differentiate Service Level Agreements according to their risk, take preventive actions in the focus of the risk, and pricing accordingly. Applying risk management raises the fulfilment rate of the Service-Level Agreements and increases the profit of the providerPostprint (published version

    Organic Service-Level Management in Service-Oriented Environments

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    Dynamic service-oriented environments (SOEs) are characterised by a large number of heterogeneous service components that are expected to support the business as a whole. The present work provides a negotiation-based approach to facilitate automated and multi-level service-level management in an SOE, where each component autonomously arranges its contribution to the whole operational goals. Evaluation experiments have shown an increased responsiveness and stability of an SOE in case of changes
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