Flexible Organization of Repositories for Provisioning Cloud Infrastructures

The paper proposes an architecture of a system automating the provisioning process of cloud computing infrastructures. Its structure and components are specified, based on an analysis of three types of requirements: infrastructure providers, service providers and end users. These considerations have led us to formulate a new infrastructural model, offered to end users as a collection of Virtual Machines (VM) connected by a dedicated Virtual Private Network (VPN) with QoS guarantees. The role of repositories in cloud provisioning systems is specified along with the relevant data acquisition processes. The applicability of the proposed system is illustrated by practical usage scenarios

Upnp-Based Discovery And Management Of Hypervisors And Virtual Machines

The paper introduces a Universal Plug and Play based discovery and management toolkitthat facilitates collaboration between cloud infrastructure providers and users. The presentedtools construct a unified hierarchy of devices and their management-related services, thatrepresents the current deployment of users’ (virtual) infrastructures in the provider’s (physical)infrastructure as well as the management interfaces of respective devices. The hierarchycan be used to enhance the capabilities of the provider’s infrastructure management system.To maintain user independence, the set of management operations exposed by a particulardevice is always defined by the device owner (either the provider or user)

An SOA-based model for the integrated provisioning of cloud and grid resources

In the last years, the availability and models of use of networked computing resources within reach of e-Science are rapidly changing and see the coexistence of many disparate paradigms: high-performance computing, grid, and recently cloud. Unfortunately, none of these paradigms is recognized as the ultimate solution, and a convergence of them all should be pursued. At the same time, recent works have proposed a number of models and tools to address the growing needs and expectations in the field of e-Science. In particular, they have shown the advantages and the feasibility of modeling e-Science environments and infrastructures according to the service-oriented architecture. In this paper, we suggest a model to promote the convergence and the integration of the different computing paradigms and infrastructures for the dynamic on-demand provisioning of resources from multiple providers as a cohesive aggregate, leveraging the service-oriented architecture. In addition, we propose a design aimed at endorsing a flexible, modular, workflow-based computing model for e-Science. The model is supplemented by a working prototype implementation together with a case study in the applicative domain of bioinformatics, which is used to validate the presented approach and to carry out some performance and scalability measurements

Introducing mobile edge computing capabilities through distributed 5G Cloud Enabled Small Cells

Current trends in broadband mobile networks are addressed towards the placement of different capabilities at the edge of the mobile network in a centralised way. On one hand, the split of the eNB between baseband processing units and remote radio headers makes it possible to process some of the protocols in centralised premises, likely with virtualised resources. On the other hand, mobile edge computing makes use of processing and storage capabilities close to the air interface in order to deploy optimised services with minimum delay. The confluence of both trends is a hot topic in the definition of future 5G networks. The full centralisation of both technologies in cloud data centres imposes stringent requirements to the fronthaul connections in terms of throughput and latency. Therefore, all those cells with limited network access would not be able to offer these types of services. This paper proposes a solution for these cases, based on the placement of processing and storage capabilities close to the remote units, which is especially well suited for the deployment of clusters of small cells. The proposed cloud-enabled small cells include a highly efficient microserver with a limited set of virtualised resources offered to the cluster of small cells. As a result, a light data centre is created and commonly used for deploying centralised eNB and mobile edge computing functionalities. The paper covers the proposed architecture, with special focus on the integration of both aspects, and possible scenarios of application.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Challenges Emerging from Future Cloud Application Scenarios

The cloud computing paradigm encompasses several key differentiating elements and technologies, tackling a number of inefficiencies, limitations and problems that have been identified in the distributed and virtualized computing domain. Nonetheless, and as it is the case for all emerging technologies, their adoption led to the presentation of new challenges and new complexities. In this paper we present key application areas and capabilities of future scenarios, which are not tackled by current advancements and highlight specific requirements and goals for advancements in the cloud computing domain. We discuss these requirements and goals across different focus areas of cloud computing, ranging from cloud service and application integration, development environments and abstractions, to interoperability and relevant to it aspects such as legislation. The future application areas and their requirements are also mapped to the aforementioned areas in order to highlight their dependencies and potential for moving cloud technologies forward and contributing towards their wider adoption

Distributed Environment for Efficient Virtual Machine Image Management in Federated Cloud Architectures

The use of Virtual Machines (VM) in Cloud computing provides various benefits in the overall software engineering lifecycle. These include efficient elasticity mechanisms resulting in higher resource utilization and lower operational costs. VM as software artifacts are created using provider-specific templates, called VM images (VMI), and are stored in proprietary or public repositories for further use. However, some technology specific choices can limit the interoperability among various Cloud providers and bundle the VMIs with nonessential or redundant software packages, leading to increased storage size, prolonged VMI delivery, stagnant VMI instantiation and ultimately vendor lock-in. To address these challenges, we present a set of novel functionalities and design approaches for efficient operation of distributed VMI repositories, specifically tailored for enabling: (i) simplified creation of lightweight and size optimized VMIs tuned for specific application requirements; (ii) multi-objective VMI repository optimization; and (iii) efficient reasoning mechanism to help optimizing complex VMI operations. The evaluation results confirm that the presented approaches can enable VMI size reduction by up to 55%, while trimming the image creation time by 66%. Furthermore, the repository optimization algorithms, can reduce the VMI delivery time by up to 51% and cut down the storage expenses by 3%. Moreover, by implementing replication strategies, the optimization algorithms can increase the system reliability by 74%

TOWARDS IMPLEMENTING VIRTUAL DATA INFRASTRUCTURES – A CASE STUDY WITH iRODS

Scientists demand easy-to-use, scalable and flexible infrastructures for sharing,managing and processing their data spread over multiple resources accessiblevia different technologies and interfaces. In our previous work, we developedthe conceptual framework VISPA for addressing these requirements. This paperprovides a case study assessing the integrated Rule-Oriented Data System(iRODS) for implementing the key concepts of VISPA. We found that iRODSis already well suited for handling metadata and sharing data. Although it doesnot directly support provenance information of data and the temporal provisioningof data, basic forms of these capabilities may be provided through itscustomization mechanisms, ie rules and micro-services