Towards Process Support for Migrating Applications to Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is an active area of research for industry and academia. There are a large number of organizations providing cloud computing infrastructure and services. In order to utilize these infrastructure resources and services, existing applications need to be migrated to clouds. However, a successful migration effort needs well-defined process support. It does not only help to identify and address challenges associated with migration but also provides a strategy to evaluate different platforms in relation to application and domain specific requirements. This paper present a process framework for supporting migration to cloud computing based on our experiences from migrating an Open Source System (OSS), Hackystat, to two different cloud computing platforms. We explained the process by performing a comparative analysis of our efforts to migrate Hackystate to Amazon Web Services and Google App Engine. We also report the potential challenges, suitable solutions, and lesson learned to support the presented process framework. We expect that the reported experiences can serve guidelines for those who intend to migrate software applications to cloud computing.Muhammad Aufeef Chauhan, Muhammad Ali Baba

Cost-minimizing dynamic migration of content distribution services into hybrid clouds

Mini-Conference - MC3: Cloud ComputingThe recent advent of cloud computing technologies has enabled agile and scalable resource access for a variety of applications. Content distribution services are a major category of popular Internet applications. A growing number of content providers are contemplating a switch to cloud-based services, for better scalability and lower cost. Two key tasks are involved for such a move: to migrate their contents to cloud storage, and to distribute their web service load to cloud-based web services. The main challenge is to make the best use of the cloud as well as their existing on-premise server infrastructure, to serve volatile content requests with service response time guarantee at all times, while incurring the minimum operational cost. Employing Lyapunov optimization techniques, we present an optimization framework for dynamic, cost-minimizing migration of content distribution services into a hybrid cloud infrastructure that spans geographically distributed data centers. A dynamic control algorithm is designed, which optimally places contents and dispatches requests in different data centers to minimize overall operational cost over time, subject to service response time constraints. Rigorous analysis shows that the algorithm nicely bounds the response times within the preset QoS target in cases of arbitrary request arrival patterns, and guarantees that the overall cost is within a small constant gap from the optimum achieved by a T-slot lookahead mechanism with known information into the future. © 2012 IEEE.published_or_final_versionThe 31st Annual IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (IEEE INFOCOM 2012), Orlando, FL., 25-30 March 2012. In IEEE Infocom Proceedings, 2012, p. 2571-257

Practical aspects of FaaS applications' migration

With the huge variety of available FaaS platforms in cloud and self-hosted environments the idea of migrating function applications from one provider to another is becoming a important consideration. This work investigates the challenges developers encounter when manually migrating applications between Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and IBM Cloud regarding the efforts needed to migrate the functions and the services. This work also proposes a simple approach to reduce the coupling between the function application and the cloud provider by externalizing the business logic into a serparate, completely vendor independant, package. We see that this approach reduces the efforts needed to migrate the source code to another provider but it does not reduce the effort of migrating the functions configuration and services. We see that the efforts for migration are not only affected by the migration of the source code but also by the migration of the services, especially in self-hosted environments. There developers also have to find a proper substitution of the service for their use-case.Bei der Vielzahl der verfügbaren FaaS-Plattformen in Cloud- und selbst gehosteten Umgebungen wird die Idee der Migration von Funktionsanwendungen von einem Anbieter zum anderen immer wichtiger. Diese Arbeit untersucht die Herausforderungen, denen Entwickler bei der manuellen Migration von Anwendungen zwischen Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure und IBM Cloud hinsichtlich des Aufwands für die Migration der Funktionen und Dienste begegnen. Diese Arbeit schlägt auch einen einfachen Ansatz vor, um die Kopplung zwischen der Funktionsanwendung und dem Cloud-Provider zu reduzieren, indem die Geschäftslogik in ein separates, völlig herstellerunabhängiges Paket ausgelagert wird. Wir sehen, dass dieser Ansatz den Aufwand für die Migration des Quellcodes zu einem anderen Anbieter reduziert, aber nicht den Aufwand für die Migration der Funktionskonfiguration und der Dienste. Wir sehen, dass die Bemühungen um die Migration nicht nur von der Quellcode-Migration, sondern auch von der Migration der Dienste, insbesondere in selbst gehosteten Umgebungen, beeinflusst werden. Dort müssen Entwickler auch einen geeigneten Ersatz für den Dienst in ihren Anwendungsfall finden

Ontology-Based Resolution of Cloud Data Lock-in Problem

Cloud computing is nowadays becoming a popular paradigm for the provision of computing infrastructure that enables organizations to achieve financial savings. On the other hand, there are some known obstacles, among which vendor lock-in stands out. Furthermore, due to missing standards and heterogeneities of cloud storage systems, the migration of data to alternative cloud providers is expensive and time-consuming. We propose an approach based on Semantic Web services and AI planning to tackle cloud vendor data lock-in problem. To complete the mentioned task, data structures and data type mapping rules between different types of cloud storage systems are defined. The migration of data among different providers of platform as a service is presented in order to prove the practical applicability of the proposed approach. Additionally, this concept was also applied to software as a service model of cloud computing to perform one-shot data migration from Zoho CRM to Salesforce CRM

Levitating Libraries to the Clouds: A Strategy for Academic Libraries

The University of Notre Dame’s Office of Information Technology is in the process of implementing a “Cloud First” strategy through which it intends to move 80% of its core technical infrastructure into the cloud by the end of 2017. The strategy advocates a tiered prioritization structure that recommends the hosting (SaaS) model for most services, the AWS (IaaS) model for fewer services, and finally on premises for a handful of the remaining services. As a campus technology partner, the Hesburgh Libraries has begun planning for moving many of our services and infrastructure into the cloud. This initiative represents a radical shift in mindset for technology planning, moving from thinking about technology as assets that need replacement every 5 to 7 years to thinking about IT as a utility, paid monthly based on actual usage. This presentation will cover how the Hesburgh Libraries is devising our plan to move a significant amount of our infrastructure to the cloud, and the phases we have outlined to meet the OIT’s 3‐year plan. We will cover: Our experimentation in Amazon Web Services and how AWS differs from our current infrastructure; The assessment of library service catalogs, both in terms of function and usage; Our determination of which hosting models meets the needs of our services (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, or on premises); Planning for the migration and roll out; Any other considerations libraries may need to evaluate in this proces

Decision support for different migration types of applications to the Cloud

Cloud computing brings many benefits to the enterprises who decide to migrate their applications to the Cloud partially or completely. This thesis focuses on helping users finding the most cost-efficient between different Cloud offerings which have similar features. Data from several Cloud providers are collected and organized in order to implement a Cloud provider knowledge base exposed as a set of web services. These services are validated against other similar systems and exposed as RESTful APIs. A decision support system is built in this work based on these APIs and evaluated by an existing use case with different migration plans

Evaluation of a methodology for migration of the database layer to the cloud based on a research case study

Cloud computing has the advantage of converting capital expenses into operational costs. This student thesis evaluates a phase driven methodology for migration of the database layer to the Cloud based on a research case study. In addition, a Cloud data migration tool is evaluated. We build an evaluation design for the methodology and the tool. Based on the methodology and with the help of the Cloud data migration tool, an application from the e-Science field is migrated to Amazon Web Services. During the migration project we collect data and document all shortcomings concerning the methodology and the tool. This evaluation data is afterwards analysed, to see how well the methodology and the tool support the migration. The results of the analysis lead to improvement suggestions on the methodology and the Cloud data migration tool

Cloud-Based Game Server Infrastructure AT PT. Games Karya Nusantara (Majamojo)

In the era of the game publishing industry, MAJAMOJO collaborates with game developers in developing game server infrastructure in Indonesia, by realizing the adoption of cloud computing using the Roadmap for Cloud Computing Adaption (ROCCA) method. Cloud computing implementation by following 5 stages of modification of the ROCCA adoption model, namely the analysis, design, adoption, migration, and management stages. By using Amazon Web Service (AWS) Cloud Service (CSP) services. Cloud computing adoption is carried out by developing game server infrastructure as connectivity between the client and the game server. The analysis is carried out by collecting data and interviews from speakers, in the design of the cloud computing technology to be used, the selection of the technology is based on the results of the analysis stage, then the adoption process prepares the cloud infrastructure to be built, based on software selection and setting up servers with recommended specifications, then migration is the core of the cloud computing adoption process, Where the process transfers the system from the physical server to the virtual server, new management will be executed if the adoption and migration process has been completed with the Game Server and Game Client connectivity indicators running normally. With the application of cloud computing based on the characteristics of the cloud itself, it is flexible, scalable, and safe to access over the internet

Estimating Potential Operational Cost Savings by Migrating On-Premises to Cloud: A Study using Amazon TCO

In order to use Amazon TCO(Total cost of ownership) calculator to compute the company operational cost saving by migrating on-premises, Colocation workloads to the AWS cloud, we started investigating the case studies showing on the AWS web page. Cases are categories by either company type or by solution. Data are gathered from Amazon webpage. The following reports are from TCO calculator to show the IT cost savings based on both qualitative and quantitative methods. By solution, the parameters like Big Data, Data Center Migration, Enterprise Solutions, Financial Services, Healthcare & Life Sciences, Internet of Things, Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence and Web & Mobile Apps are normally considered. By company the parameters like type and size, Enterprises, Startup and Public Sector are considered

Exploring the cloud from passive measurements: The Amazon AWS case

This paper presents a characterization of Amazon's Web Services (AWS), the most prominent cloud provider that offers computing, storage, and content delivery platforms. Leveraging passive measurements, we explore the EC2, S3 and CloudFront AWS services to unveil their infrastructure, the pervasiveness of content they host, and their traffic allocation policies. Measurements reveal that most of the content residing on EC2 and S3 is served by one Amazon datacenter, located in Virginia, which appears to be the worst performing one for Italian users. This causes traffic to take long and expensive paths in the network. Since no automatic migration and load-balancing policies are offered by AWS among different locations, content is exposed to the risks of outages. The CloudFront CDN, on the contrary, shows much better performance thanks to the effective cache selection policy that serves 98% of the traffic from the nearest available cache. CloudFront exhibits also dynamic load-balancing policies, in contrast to the static allocation of instances on EC2 and S3. Information presented in this paper will be useful for developers aiming at entrusting AWS to deploy their contents, and for researchers willing to improve cloud desig