Component-aware Orchestration of Cloud-based Enterprise Applications, from TOSCA to Docker and Kubernetes

Enterprise IT is currently facing the challenge of coordinating the management of complex, multi-component applications across heterogeneous cloud platforms. Containers and container orchestrators provide a valuable solution to deploy multi-component applications over cloud platforms, by coupling the lifecycle of each application component to that of its hosting container. We hereby propose a solution for going beyond such a coupling, based on the OASIS standard TOSCA and on Docker. We indeed propose a novel approach for deploying multi-component applications on top of existing container orchestrators, which allows to manage each component independently from the container used to run it. We also present prototype tools implementing our approach, and we show how we effectively exploited them to carry out a concrete case study

Dynamic Agent Compression

We introduce a new method for processing agents in agent-based models that significantly improves the efficiency of certain models. Dynamic Agent Compression allows agents to shift in and out of a compressed state based on their changing levels of heterogeneity. Sets of homogeneous agents are stored in compact bins, making the model more efficient in its use of memory and computational cycles. Modelers can use this increased efficiency to speed up the execution times, to conserve memory, or to scale up the complexity or number of agents in their simulations. We describe in detail an implementation of Dynamic Agent Compression that is lossless, i.e., no model detail is discarded during the compression process. We also contrast lossless compression to lossy compression, which promises greater efficiency gains yet may introduce artifacts in model behavior. The advantages outweigh the overhead of Dynamic Agent Compression in models where agents are unevenly heterogeneous — where a set of highly heterogeneous agents are intermixed with numerous other agents that fall into broad internally homogeneous categories. Dynamic Agent Compression is not appropriate in models with few, exclusively complex, agents.Agent-Based Modeling, Scaling, Homogeneity, Compression

ClouNS - A Cloud-native Application Reference Model for Enterprise Architects

The capability to operate cloud-native applications can generate enormous business growth and value. But enterprise architects should be aware that cloud-native applications are vulnerable to vendor lock-in. We investigated cloud-native application design principles, public cloud service providers, and industrial cloud standards. All results indicate that most cloud service categories seem to foster vendor lock-in situations which might be especially problematic for enterprise architectures. This might sound disillusioning at first. However, we present a reference model for cloud-native applications that relies only on a small subset of well standardized IaaS services. The reference model can be used for codifying cloud technologies. It can guide technology identification, classification, adoption, research and development processes for cloud-native application and for vendor lock-in aware enterprise architecture engineering methodologies

Explorar kubernetes e devOps num contexto de IoT

Containerized solutions and container orchestration technologies have recently been of great interest to organizations as a way of accelerating both software development and delivery processes. However, adopting these is a rather complex shift that may impact an organization and teams that were already established. This is where development cultures such as DevOps emerge to ease such shift amongst teams, promoting collaboration and automation of development and deployment processes throughout. The purpose of the current dissertation is to illustrate the path that led to the use of DevOps and containerization as means to support the development and deployment of a proof of concept system, Firefighter Sync – an Internet of Things based solution applied to a firefighting monitoring scenario. The goal, besides implementing Firefighter Sync, was to propose and deploy a development and operations ecosystem based on DevOps practices to achieve a full automation pipeline for both the development and operations processes. Firefighter Sync enabled the exploration of such state-of-the-art solutions such as Kubernetes to support container-based deployment and Jenkins for a fully automated CI/CD pipeline. Firefighter Sync clearly illustrates that addressing the development of a system from a DevOps perspective from the very beginning, although it requires an accentuated learning curve due to the large range of concepts and technologies addressed throughout, has illustrated to effectively impact the development process as well as ease the solution for future evolution. A good example is the automation process pipeline, that whilst allowing an easy integration of new features within a DevOps process – implies addressing the development and operations as a whole – it abstracts specific technological concerns turning these transversals to the traditional stages from development to deployment.Soluções de contentores e orquestração de contentores têm vindo a tornar-se de grande interesse para as organizações como uma forma de acelerar os processos de desenvolvimento e entrega de software. No entanto, adotá-las é uma mudança bastante complexa que pode impactar uma organização e equipas já estabelecidas. É aqui que surgem culturas como o DevOps para facilitar essa mudança, promovendo a colaboração e a automação dos processos de desenvolvimento e deployment entre equipas. O objetivo desta dissertação é ilustrar o caminho que levou ao uso de DevOps e à conteinerização de modo a apoiar o desenvolvimento e o deployment de um sistema como prova de conceito, o Firefighter Sync – uma solução baseada na Internet das Coisas aplicada a um cenário de monitorização de combate a incêndios. Além de implementar o Firefighter Sync, o objetivo era também propor e implementar um ecossistema de desenvolvimento e operações com base nas práticas de DevOps para alcançar uma pipeline de automação completa para os processos de desenvolvimento e operações. O Firefighter Sync permitiu explorar soluções que constituem o estado da arte neste contexto, como o Kubernetes para apoiar o deployment baseado em contentores e o Jenkins para suportar a pipeline de CI/CD totalmente automatizada. O Firefighter Sync ilustra claramente que abordar o desenvolvimento de um sistema a partir da perspectiva de DevOps, embora exija uma curva de aprendizagem acentuada devido à grande variedade de conceitos e tecnologias inerentes ao longo do processo, demonstrou tornar mais eficiente o processo de desenvolvimento, bem como facilitar evolução futura. Um exemplo é a pipeline de automação, que permite uma fácil integração de novos recursos dentro de um processo de DevOps – que implica abordar o desenvolvimento e as operações como um todo – abstraindo assim preocupações tecnológicas específicas, transformando essas transversais nas fases tradicionais do desenvolvimento ao deployment.Mestrado em Engenharia Informátic

A DevOps approach to integration of software components in an EU research project

We present a description of the development and deployment infrastructure being created to support the integration effort of HARNESS, an EU FP7 project. HARNESS is a multi-partner research project intended to bring the power of heterogeneous resources to the cloud. It consists of a number of different services and technologies that interact with the OpenStack cloud computing platform at various levels. Many of these components are being developed independently by different teams at different locations across Europe, and keeping the work fully integrated is a challenge. We use a combination of Vagrant based virtual machines, Docker containers, and Ansible playbooks to provide a consistent and up-to-date environment to each developer. The same playbooks used to configure local virtual machines are also used to manage a static testbed with heterogeneous compute and storage devices, and to automate ephemeral larger-scale deployments to Grid5000. Access to internal projects is managed by GitLab, and automated testing of services within Docker-based environments and integrated deployments within virtual-machines is provided by Buildbot

Migration of a cloud-based microservice platform to a container solution

Este trabajo presenta las labores realizadas durante 6 meses de prácticas en Gandi SAS, en el proyecto Caliopen. Caliopen es un proyecto open-source de mensajería orientado a respetar la privacidad de sus usuarios. El objetivo del trabajo es la administración y mejora de la plataforma de mensajería del proyecto, haciéndola evolucionar a una solución estable y escalable. La memoria describe el estudio y la implantación de una solución basada en Kubernetes para la nueva plataforma, desplegada en la plataforma de IaaS de Gandi. En el proceso también se describen las diferentes herramientas y utilidades desarrolladas, así como la solución implementada para monitorizar el sistema