A service broker for Intercloud computing

This thesis aims at assisting users in finding the most suitable Cloud resources taking into account their functional and non-functional SLA requirements. A key feature of the work is a Cloud service broker acting as mediator between consumers and Clouds. The research involves the implementation and evaluation of two SLA-aware match-making algorithms by use of a simulation environment. The work investigates also the optimal deployment of Multi-Cloud workflows on Intercloud environments

Formulating and managing viable SLAs in cloud computing from a small to medium service provider's viewpoint: A state-of-the-art review

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd In today's competitive world, service providers need to be customer-focused and proactive in their marketing strategies to create consumer awareness of their services. Cloud computing provides an open and ubiquitous computing feature in which a large random number of consumers can interact with providers and request services. In such an environment, there is a need for intelligent and efficient methods that increase confidence in the successful achievement of business requirements. One such method is the Service Level Agreement (SLA), which is comprised of service objectives, business terms, service relations, obligations and the possible action to be taken in the case of SLA violation. Most of the emphasis in the literature has, until now, been on the formation of meaningful SLAs by service consumers, through which their requirements will be met. However, in an increasingly competitive market based on the cloud environment, service providers too need a framework that will form a viable SLA, predict possible SLA violations before they occur, and generate early warning alarms that flag a potential lack of resources. This is because when a provider and a consumer commit to an SLA, the service provider is bound to reserve the agreed amount of resources for the entire period of that agreement – whether the consumer uses them or not. It is therefore very important for cloud providers to accurately predict the likely resource usage for a particular consumer and to formulate an appropriate SLA before finalizing an agreement. This problem is more important for a small to medium cloud service provider which has limited resources that must be utilized in the best possible way to generate maximum revenue. A viable SLA in cloud computing is one that intelligently helps the service provider to determine the amount of resources to offer to a requesting consumer, and there are number of studies on SLA management in the literature. The aim of this paper is two-fold. First, it presents a comprehensive overview of existing state-of-the-art SLA management approaches in cloud computing, and their features and shortcomings in creating viable SLAs from the service provider's viewpoint. From a thorough analysis, we observe that the lack of a viable SLA management framework renders a service provider unable to make wise decisions in forming an SLA, which could lead to service violations and violation penalties. To fill this gap, our second contribution is the proposal of the Optimized Personalized Viable SLA (OPV-SLA) framework which assists a service provider to form a viable SLA and start managing SLA violation before an SLA is formed and executed. The framework also assists a service provider to make an optimal decision in service formation and allocate the appropriate amount of marginal resources. We demonstrate the applicability of our framework in forming viable SLAs through experiments. From the evaluative results, we observe that our framework helps a service provider to form viable SLAs and later to manage them to effectively minimize possible service violation and penalties

Service Level Agreements in Cloud Computing and Big Data

Now-a-days Most of the industries are having large volumes of data. Data has range of Tera bytes to Peta byte. Organizations are looking to handle the growth of data. Enterprises are using cloud deployments to address the big data and analytics with respect to the interaction between cloud and big data. This paper presents big data issues and research directions towards the ongoing work of processing of big data in the distributed environments

Establishing and Monitoring SLAs in complex Service Based Systems

In modern service economies, service provisioning needs to be regulated by complex SLA hierarchies among providers of heterogeneous services, defined at the business, software, and infrastructure layers. Starting from the SLA Management framework defined in the SLA@SOI EU FP7 Integrated Project, we focus on the relationship between establishment and monitoring of such SLAs, showing how the two processes become tightly interleaved in order to provide meaningful mechanisms for SLA management. We first describe the process for SLA establishment adopted within the framework; then, we propose an architecture for monitoring established SLAs, which satisfies the two main requirements introduced by SLA establishment: the availability of historical data for evaluating SLA offers and the assessment of the capability to monitor the terms in a SLA offer

INVESTIGATION OF THE ROLE OF SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENTS IN WEB SERVICE QUALITY

Context/Background: Use of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) is crucial to provide the value added services to consumers to achieve their requirements successfully. SLAs also ensure the expected Quality of Service to consumers. Aim: This study investigates how efficient structural representation and management of SLAs can help to ensure the Quality of Service (QoS) in Web services during Web service composition. Method: Existing specifications and structures for SLAs for Web services do not fully formalize and provide support for different automatic and dynamic behavioral aspects needed for QoS calculation. This study addresses the issues on how to formalize and document the structures of SLAs for better service utilization and improved QoS results. The Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is extended in this study with addition of an SLAAgent, which helps to automate the QoS calculation using Fuzzy Inference Systems, service discovery, service selection, SLA monitoring and management during service composition with the help of structured SLA documents. Results: The proposed framework improves the ways of how to structure, manage and monitor SLAs during Web service composition to achieve the better Quality of Service effectively and efficiently. Conclusions: To deal with different types of computational requirements the automation of SLAs is a challenge during Web service composition. This study shows the significance of the SLAs for better QoS during composition of services in SOA

Research Opportunities in an Intercloud Environment Using MOSt in SLA4CLOUD Project

International audienceActually, Internet services are becoming essential for different types of users. This evolution impacts how data connections , network routes and resources are configured and used. In this context, the way in which distributed applications and services is becoming more difficult to manage. Cloud computing allows interactions between cloud providers and cloud service providers, and cloud providers can offer deployment services in different datacenters located in different world regions. Much development effort is needed for deploying scalable solutions. One of the these challenges is how to design, develop and deploy cloud solutions that could meet the policies and security requirements of multiple environments needs. The SLA4CLOUD project intends to build an environment where a user can request the deployment of its services anywhere in the underlying infrastructure, using the MOSt platform and its services. This work aims to report some opportunities and research challenges resulting from SLA4CLOUD project in the context of MOSt platform, and the promotion of new projects and partnerships

Sla Management in a Collaborative Network Of Federated Clouds: The Cloudland

Cloud services have always promised to be available, flexible, and speedy. However, not a single Cloud provider can deliver such promises to their distinctly demanding customers. Cloud providers have a constrained geographical presence, and are willing to invest in infrastructure only when it is profitable to them. Cloud federation is a concept that collectively combines segregated Cloud services to create an extended pool of resources for Clouds to competently deliver their promised level of services. This dissertation is concerned with studying the governing aspects related to the federation of Clouds through collaborative networking. The main objective of this dissertation is to define a framework for a Cloud network that considers balancing the trade-offs among customers’ various quality of service (QoS) requirements, as well as providers\u27 resources utilization. We propose a network of federated Clouds, CloudLend, that creates a platform for Cloud providers to collaborate, and for customers to expand their service selections. We also define and specify a service level agreement (SLA) management model in order to govern and administer the relationships established between different Cloud services in CloudLend. We define a multi-level SLA specification model to annotate and describe QoS terms, in addition to a game theory-based automated SLA negotiation model that supports both customers and providers in negotiating SLA terms, and guiding them towards signing a contract. We also define an adaptive agent-based SLA monitoring model which identifies the root causes of SLA violations, and impartially distributes any updates and changes in established SLAs to all relevant entities. Formal verification proved that our proposed framework assures customers with maximum optimized guarantees to their QoS requirements, in addition to supporting Cloud providers to make informed resource utilization decisions. Additionally, simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of our SLA management model. Our proposed Cloud Lend network and its SLA management model paves the way to resource sharing among different Cloud providers, which allows for the providers’ lock-in constraints to be broken, allowing effortless migration of customers’ applications across different providers whenever is needed

Conceptual Service Level Agreement Mechanism to Minimize the SLA Violation with SLA Negotiation Process in Cloud Computing Environment

تُستخدم الخدمة عبر الإنترنت لتكون بمثابة الدفع لكل استخدام في الحوسبة السحابية. لا يحتاج مستخدم الخدمة إلى عقد طويل مع مزودي الخدمات السحابية. اتفاقية مستوى الخدمة (SLAs) هي تفاهمات تم تحديدها بين مزودي الخدمة السحابية وغيرهم ، على سبيل المثال ، مستخدم الخدمة أو المشغل الوسيط أو المشغلين المراقبين. نظرًا لأن الحوسبة السحابية هي تقنية مستمرة تقدم العديد من الخدمات لتطبيقات الأعمال الأساسية وأنظمة قابلة للتكيف لإدارة الاتفاقيات عبر الإنترنت تعتبر مهمة تحافظ على اتفاقية مستوى الخدمةو جودة الخدمة لمستخدم السحابة. إذا فشل مزود الخدمة في الحفاظ على الخدمة المطلوبة ، فإن اتفاقية مستوى الخدمة تعتبر انتهاكًا لاتفاقية مستوى الخدمة. الهدف الرئيسي هو تقليل انتهاكات اتفاقية مستوى الخدمة (SLA) للحفاظ على جودة الخدمة لمستخدمي السحابة. في هذه المقالة البحثية ، اقترحنا صندوق أدوات للمساعدة في إجراء تبادل اتفاقية مستوى الخدمة مع مزودي الخدمة والذي سيمكن العميل السحابي من الإشارة إلى متطلبات جودة الخدمة واقترح خوارزمية بالإضافة إلى نموذج التفاوض من اجل التفاوض على الطلب مع الخدمة لمقدمي الخدمة لإنتاج اتفاقية أفضل بين مقدم الخدمة ومستهلك الخدمة السحابية. وبالتالي ، يمكن للإطار الذي تمت مناقشته تقليل انتهاكات اتفاقية مستوى الخدمة وكذلك خيبات الأمل في المفاوضات وتوسيع نطاق كفاية التكلفة. علاوة على ذلك ، فإن مجموعة أدوات اتفاقية مستوى الخدمة المقترحة منتجة بشكل إضافي للعملاء حتى يتمكن العملاء من تأمين سداد قيمة معقولة مقابل تقليل جودة الخدمة أو وقت التنازل. يوضح هذا البحث أنه يمكن الحفاظ على مستوى الضمان في موفري الخدمات السحابية من خلال نقل الخدمات دون انقطاع من منظور العميل.Online service is used to be as Pay-Per-Use in Cloud computing. Service user need not be in a long time contract with cloud service providers. Service level agreements (SLAs) are understandings marked between a cloud service providers and others, for example, a service user, intermediary operator, or observing operators. Since cloud computing is an ongoing technology giving numerous services to basic business applications and adaptable systems to manage online agreements are significant. SLA maintains the quality-of-service to the cloud user. If service provider fails to maintain the required service SLA is considered to be SLA violated. The main aim is to minimize the SLA violations for maintain the QoS of their cloud users. In this research article, a toolbox is proposed to help the procedure of exchanging of a SLA with the service providers that will enable the cloud client in indicating service quality demands and an algorithm as well as Negotiation model is also proposed to negotiate the request with the service providers to produce a better agreement between service provider and cloud service consumer. Subsequently, the discussed framework can reduce SLA violations as well as negotiation disappointments and have expanded cost-adequacy. Moreover, the suggested SLA toolkit is additionally productive to clients so clients can secure a sensible value repayment for diminished QoS or conceding time. This research shows the assurance level in the cloud service providers can be kept up by as yet conveying the services with no interruption from the client's perspectiv

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

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