MorphoSys: efficient colocation of QoS-constrained workloads in the cloud

In hosting environments such as IaaS clouds, desirable application performance is usually guaranteed through the use of Service Level Agreements (SLAs), which specify minimal fractions of resource capacities that must be allocated for unencumbered use for proper operation. Arbitrary colocation of applications with different SLAs on a single host may result in inefficient utilization of the host’s resources. In this paper, we propose that periodic resource allocation and consumption models -- often used to characterize real-time workloads -- be used for a more granular expression of SLAs. Our proposed SLA model has the salient feature that it exposes flexibilities that enable the infrastructure provider to safely transform SLAs from one form to another for the purpose of achieving more efficient colocation. Towards that goal, we present MORPHOSYS: a framework for a service that allows the manipulation of SLAs to enable efficient colocation of arbitrary workloads in a dynamic setting. We present results from extensive trace-driven simulations of colocated Video-on-Demand servers in a cloud setting. These results show that potentially-significant reduction in wasted resources (by as much as 60%) are possible using MORPHOSYS.National Science Foundation (0720604, 0735974, 0820138, 0952145, 1012798

An emulation of VoD services using virtual network environments

Virtualization platforms are a viable alternative for the implementation of IP network experimentation environments. These platforms facilitate the conducting of tests as if a real environment were used and therefore can reduce the risk of failure as well as investment and experimentation costs. This paper proposes to develop a method to improve the results obtained in virtual network environments, trying to resemble those obtained in a real environment. To carry this out, we have emulated a video-on-demand service over ADSL using Xen as a virtualization tool, just as it would have been through a real ADSL connection. Connectivity, IP addressing, switching, routing and video streaming were tested to check the functionality of virtual network environments. Then, the bandwidth, the delay, and the inter-arrival time of video streaming packets were measured both in real and virtual environments. Finally, these parameters were tuned in the virtual network environments obtaining a similar behavior in clients and servers of both cases

Multicriteria Resource Brokering in Cloud Computing for Streaming Service

By leveraging cloud computing such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), the outsourcing of computing resources used to support operations, including servers, storage, and networking components, is quite beneficial for various providers of Internet application. With this increasing trend, resource allocation that both assures QoS via Service Level Agreement (SLA) and avoids overprovisioning in order to reduce cost becomes a crucial priority and challenge in the design and operation of complex service-based platforms such as streaming service. On the other hand, providers of IaaS also concern their profit performance and energy consumption while offering these virtualized resources. In this paper, considering both service-oriented and infrastructure-oriented criteria, we regard this resource allocation problem as Multicriteria Decision Making problem and propose an effective trade-off approach based on goal programming model. To validate its effectiveness, a cloud architecture for streaming application is addressed and extensive analysis is performed for related criteria. The results of numerical simulations show that the proposed approach strikes a balance between these conflicting criteria commendably and achieves high cost efficiency

Strategic and operational services for workload management in the cloud

In hosting environments such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) clouds, desirable application performance is typically guaranteed through the use of Service Level Agreements (SLAs), which specify minimal fractions of resource capacities that must be allocated by a service provider for unencumbered use by customers to ensure proper operation of their workloads. Most IaaS offerings are presented to customers as fixed-size and fixed-price SLAs, that do not match well the needs of specific applications. Furthermore, arbitrary colocation of applications with different SLAs may result in inefficient utilization of hosts' resources, resulting in economically undesirable customer behavior. In this thesis, we propose the design and architecture of a Colocation as a Service (CaaS) framework: a set of strategic and operational services that allow the efficient colocation of customer workloads. CaaS strategic services provide customers the means to specify their application workload using an SLA language that provides them the opportunity and incentive to take advantage of any tolerances they may have regarding the scheduling of their workloads. CaaS operational services provide the information necessary for, and carry out the reconfigurations mandated by strategic services. We recognize that it could be the case that there are multiple, yet functionally equivalent ways to express an SLA. Thus, towards that end, we present a service that allows the provably-safe transformation of SLAs from one form to another for the purpose of achieving more efficient colocation. Our CaaS framework could be incorporated into an IaaS offering by providers or it could be implemented as a value added proposition by IaaS resellers. To establish the practicality of such offerings, we present a prototype implementation of our proposed CaaS framework

Scaling Social Media Applications into Geo-Distributed Clouds

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Kubernetes as an Availability Manager for Microservice Based Applications

The architectural style of microservices has been gaining popularity in recent years. In this architectural style, small and loosely coupled modules are deployed and scaled inde-pendently to compose cloud-native applications. Microservices are maintained and tested easily and are faster at startup time. However, to fully leverage from the benefits of the archi-tectural style of microservices, it is necessary to use technologies such as containerization. Therefore, in practice, microservices are containerized in order to remain isolated and light-weight and are orchestrated by orchestration platforms such as Kubernetes. Kubernetes is an open-source platform that defines a set of building blocks which collectively provide mecha-nisms for orchestrating containerized microservices. The move towards the architectural style of microservices is well underway and carrier-grade service providers are migrating their lega-cy applications to a microservice based architecture running on Kubernetes. However, service availability remains a concern. Service availability is measured as the percentage of time the service is provisioned. High Availability (HA) is a non-functional requirement for service availability of at least 99.999%. Although the characteristics of microservice based architec-tures naturally contribute to improving the availability, Kubernetes as an orchestration plat-form for microservices needs to be evaluated in terms of availability. Therefore, in this thesis, we identify possible architectures for deploying stateless and stateful microservice based ap-plications with Kubernetes and evaluate Kubernetes from the perspective of availability it provides for its managed applications. Our experiment’s results show that the healing capabili-ties of Kubernetes are not sufficient for providing high availability, especially for stateful ap-plications. Therefore, we propose a State Controller which integrates with Kubernetes and allows for state replication and automatic service redirection to the healthy microservice instance. We conduct experiments to evaluate our solution and compare the different archi-tectures from an availability perspective and scaling overhead. The results of our investiga-tions show that our solution improves the recovery time of stateful microservice based appli-cations by 55% and even up to 99% in certain cases

QOE-AWARE CONTENT DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS FOR ADAPTIVE BITRATE VIDEO STREAMING

A prodigious increase in video streaming content along with a simultaneous rise in end system capabilities has led to the proliferation of adaptive bit rate video streaming users in the Internet. Today, video streaming services range from Video-on-Demand services like traditional IP TV to more recent technologies such as immersive 3D experiences for live sports events. In order to meet the demands of these services, the multimedia and networking research community continues to strive toward efficiently delivering high quality content across the Internet while also trying to minimize content storage and delivery costs. The introduction of flexible and adaptable technologies such as compute and storage clouds, Network Function Virtualization and Software Defined Networking continue to fuel content provider revenue. Today, content providers such as Google and Facebook build their own Software-Defined WANs to efficiently serve millions of users worldwide, while NetFlix partners with ISPs such as ATT (using OpenConnect) and cloud providers such as Amazon EC2 to serve their content and manage the delivery of several petabytes of high-quality video content for millions of subscribers at a global scale, respectively. In recent years, the unprecedented growth of video traffic in the Internet has seen several innovative systems such as Software Defined Networks and Information Centric Networks as well as inventive protocols such as QUIC, in an effort to keep up with the effects of this remarkable growth. While most existing systems continue to sub-optimally satisfy user requirements, future video streaming systems will require optimal management of storage and bandwidth resources that are several orders of magnitude larger than what is implemented today. Moreover, Quality-of-Experience metrics are becoming increasingly fine-grained in order to accurately quantify diverse content and consumer needs. In this dissertation, we design and investigate innovative adaptive bit rate video streaming systems and analyze the implications of recent technologies on traditional streaming approaches using real-world experimentation methods. We provide useful insights for current and future content distribution network administrators to tackle Quality-of-Experience dilemmas and serve high quality video content to several users at a global scale. In order to show how Quality-of-Experience can benefit from core network architectural modifications, we design and evaluate prototypes for video streaming in Information Centric Networks and Software-Defined Networks. We also present a real-world, in-depth analysis of adaptive bitrate video streaming over protocols such as QUIC and MPQUIC to show how end-to-end protocol innovation can contribute to substantial Quality-of-Experience benefits for adaptive bit rate video streaming systems. We investigate a cross-layer approach based on QUIC and observe that application layer-based information can be successfully used to determine transport layer parameters for ABR streaming applications

Mobile Oriented Future Internet (MOFI)

This Special Issue consists of seven papers that discuss how to enhance mobility management and its associated performance in the mobile-oriented future Internet (MOFI) environment. The first two papers deal with the architectural design and experimentation of mobility management schemes, in which new schemes are proposed and real-world testbed experimentations are performed. The subsequent three papers focus on the use of software-defined networks (SDN) for effective service provisioning in the MOFI environment, together with real-world practices and testbed experimentations. The remaining two papers discuss the network engineering issues in newly emerging mobile networks, such as flying ad-hoc networks (FANET) and connected vehicular networks

Leveraging cloud computing for IPTV : moving the set-top box to the cloud

Dissertação de mestrado em Engenharia de InformáticaP Television (IPTV) has changed the way we perceive our TV sets. It has given us the ability to take control of our TV viewing activities. We can now interact with our TV set in a way we might have thought impossible a few decades ago. With the push of a button we can schedule TV recordings, stop and even rewind the broadcast. Users are now able to control what they want to view, when they want to view it. TV sets have also evolved and gained a new set of functionalities, they have become smart, allowing us to connect o the Internet and decode media files that are inputed through usb ports and streamed through the network or the Internet. But the TV is no longer the center of our multimedia experience, now we have new ways to access the TV content we have subscribed. Viewing TV on a laptop, a smartphone or even a tablet is now more and more common. Cloud Computing (CC) has also brought us some revolutions, we can now have systems that grow and adapt on-the-fly to the conditions presented to them. An application can extend it’s storage capacity in a matter of minutes, and the same can be said of the processing power of the underlying platform. Our objective in this work is to discuss the possibility of creating a synergy between both services. By creating a system where IPTV and CC would interact, we could create a service that would provide IPTV anytime and anywhere. With the possibilities CC brings we can move the Set-top Box (STB) to the cloud and create new service functionalities and reduce the cost of having to install a STB in every client. We have focussed our work in the simulation of a CC infrastructure that would host Virtual STB’s that would be accessible from wherever there would be a network connection