Dynamic cloud provisioning based on TOSCA

Cloud computing, today, is a ubiquitous paradigm. Its features such as availability of a practically infinite pool of computing resources, on demand, by using a pay-per-use model has resulted in its adoption by the industry for the realization of modern, sophisticated, and highly scalable IT applications. Such applications are often comprised of various components and services offered by different cloud service providers. This, in turn, raises two significant challenges- (i) automated provisioning and management, and (ii) interoperability and portability of the applications in a multi-cloud environment. As a result, the Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications (TOSCA) standard was introduced by OASIS. This standard provides a metamodel to describe the topology of complex applications along with all the components, artifacts, and services in a single template that allows deploying the application in an interoperable and portable manner. In this Master thesis, we propose a concept that generates small and reusable TOSCA provisioning plans which can be orchestrated to deploy the overall application as opposed to using a monolithic provisioning plan. This goal is achieved in three steps - (i) splitting the application topology into a set of smaller sub-topologies, (ii) generating smaller plans called partial plans for each sub-topology, (iii) and finally orchestrating the partial plans to provision an instance of the application. Additionally, this concept enables the reuse of these plans for tasks such as scaling out individual components of the application. Finally, the feasibility of the proposed concept is demonstrated by a prototypical implementation developed using the OpenTOSCA framework

Towards Cloud Application Description Templates Supporting Quality of Service

Typical scientific, industrial and public sector applications require resource scalability and efficient resource utilization in order to serve a variable number of customers. Cloud computing provides an ideal solution to support such applications. However, the dynamic and intelligent utilization of cloud infrastructure resources from the perspective of cloud applications is not trivial. Although there have been several efforts to support the intelligent and coordinated deployment, and to a smaller extent also the run-time orchestration of cloud applications, no comprehensive solution has emerged until now that successfully leverages large scale near operational levels and ease of use. COLA is a European research project to provide a reference implementation of a generic and pluggable framework that supports the optimal and secure deployment and run-time orchestration of cloud applications. Such applications can then be embedded into workflows or science gateway frameworks to support complex application scenarios from user-friendly interfaces. A specific aspect of the cloud orchestration framework developed by COLA is the ability to describe complex application architectures incorporating several services. Besides the description of service components, the framework will also support the definition of various Quality of Service (QoS) parameters related to performance, economic viability and security. This paper concentrates on this latter aspect analysing how such application description templates can be developed based on existing standards and technologies

Towards a unified management of applications on heterogeneous clouds

J. Carrasco, F. Durán y E. Pimentel. "Towards a Unified Management of Applications on Heterogeneous Clouds". Proceedings of the PhD Symposium at the 5th European Conference on Service-Oriented and Cloud Computing. G. Zavattaro and W. Zimmermann (eds). University Halle-Wittenberg. Technical Report 2016/02, 40-47. 2016.The diversity in the way cloud providers o↵er their services, give their SLAs, present their QoS, or support di↵erent technologies, makes very difficult the portability and interoperability of cloud applications, and favours the well-known vendor lock-in problem. We propose a model to describe cloud applications and the required resources in an agnostic, and providers- and resources-independent way, in which individual application modules, and entire applications, may be re-deployed using different services without modification. To support this model, and after the proposal of a variety of cross-cloud application management tools by different authors, we propose going one step further in the unification of cloud services with a management approach in which IaaS and PaaS services are integrated into a unified interface. We provide support for deploying applications whose components are distributed on different cloud providers, indistinctly using IaaS and PaaS services.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

TOSCA4Mashups - Provisionierung und Ausführung von Data Mashups in der Cloud

Mit der stetig wachsenden Menge an Daten wird Datenintegration und Datenverarbeitung zunehmend schwieriger. Domänen-Experten ohne IT-Hintergrund sollen aus großen Datenmengen entsprechende Informationen gewinnen. Leicht zu bedienende Werkzeuge sind nötig, um Daten aus heterogenen Datenmengen durch Domänen-Experten zu verarbeiten. Data Mashups ermöglichen die Verarbeitung und Integration verschiedener, heterogener Datenquellen. Dabei nutzen manche Data Mashup-Lösungen dynamische Ausführungsumgebungen. Die Cloud bietet sich für die Provisionierung solcher dynamisch zusammengesetzten Ausführungsumgebungen an, da Rechenressourcen ebenso dynamisch bereitgestellt werden können. Eine Möglichkeit, um Portabilität und Management von Cloud-Anwendungen zu ermöglichen ist OASIS TOSCA. Um Anwendungen mit TOSCA automatisch zu provisionieren werden alle notwendigen Komponenten in einer sogenannten Topologie modelliert und mit allen notwendigen Informationen, um die Anwendung zu betreiben in ein selbst-enthaltenes Dateiformat, sogenannte Cloud Service Archives verpackt. Die TOSCA Laufzeitumgebung kann diese Archivdatei verarbeiten und die Anwendung automatisiert in der Cloud provisionieren. Im Rahmen dieser Bachelorarbeit wird ein Konzept entwickelt, um Data Mashups automatisiert in der Cloud zu Provisionieren und auszuführen. Um das Konzept zu testen wurde ein Prototyp implementiert, der die TOSCA Laufzeitumgebung OpenTOSCA der Universität Stuttgart verwendet

Design pattern detection framework for TOSCA-topologies

Cloud Computing Patterns are Design Patterns especially for cloud applications and provide abstract solution concepts for often reoccurring problems during the implementation of cloud applications. These concepts are mainly used by developers and modelers. To learn about implemented patterns in a completed application, one has to manually analyze the code and the architecture. To improve this time-consuming method, the possibility of automating this process is investigated. This bachelor's thesis proposes an approach for a Design Pattern Detection Framework, to perform an automatic pattern detection. TOSCA, provided by OASIS, is a standardized description for the development of cloud applications. Their architectures can be described by TOSCA topologies, to model components and relationships among each other. The framework, which is developed in the context of this bachelor's thesis, is written in Java and integrated in Winery, a graphical modeling tool for TOSCA topologies, which is a part of the OpenTOSCA ecosystem. The underlying concept of this work follows an approach to detect which Cloud Computing Patterns are used in TOSCA topologies. The concept defines the modeling of Cloud Computing Patterns with TOSCA topologies and how TOSCA topologies are abstracted, to be comparable with pattern topologies. Further, the use of pattern taxonomies is explained to include the interrelations of Cloud Computing Patterns. Basically, patterns and TOSCA topologies are handled as graphs. Consequential, probabilities for possible patterns can be set. For the detection of pattern graphs in a topology graph, an algorithm for subgraph isomorphism is used.Cloud Computing Patterns sind Entwurfsmuster speziell für Cloudanwendungen und stellen abstrakte Lösungskonzepte für häufig auftretende Probleme bei der Implementierung von Cloudanwendungen bereit. Diese Konzepte werden hauptsächlich von Entwicklern und Modellierern benutzt. Um die Umsetzung eines Pattern in einer fertigen Anwendung zu entdecken, muss der Code und die Architektur von Hand analysiert werden. Um diese zeitintensive Methodik zu verbessern, wurde die Möglichkeit der Automatisierung dieses Prozesses untersucht. Diese Bachelorarbeit stellt einen Ansatz für ein Design Pattern Detection Framework dar, um eine automatische Patternerkennung zu ermöglichen. TOSCA ist eine von OASIS standardisierte Beschreibung für die Entwicklung von Cloudanwendungen. Deren Architekturen können mittels TOSCA Topologien beschrieben werden, um Komponenten und deren Beziehungen zueinander, zu modellieren. Das Framework, das im Rahmen dieser Bachelorarbeit entwickelt wird, ist in Java geschrieben und in die Winery, ein Tool zur grafischen Modellierung von TOSCA Topologien und Teil des OpenTOSCA Ecosystems, integriert. Das zugrundeliegende Konzept dieser Arbeit folgt dem Ansatz, automatisiert zu erkennen, welche Cloud Computing Patterns in TOSCA Topologien verwendet werden. Das Konzept definiert die Modellierung dieser Patterns mittels TOSCA Topologien und wie von TOSCA Topologien abstrahiert werden muss, um TOSCA Topologien mit Pattern Topologien vergleichen zu können. Weiter wird die Verwendung von Pattern Taxonomien erklärt, um die Zusammenhänge zwischen den einzelnen Patterns zu berücksichtigen. Daraus folgend können Wahrscheinlichkeiten für mögliche Patterns gesetzt werden. Für die Erkennung von Patterngraphen in einem Topologiegraph, wird ein Subgraphisomorphismus Algorithmus verwendet

Deployment of TOSCA cloud services archives using Kubernetes

In recent years container virtualization and container management emerged in the context of Cloud computing as a new paradigm in IT enterprises. It introduces new approaches that enable the IT industry to manage their application and services more effectively in the Cloud. With the rapid increase of usage of Cloud computing, IT companies introduce new tools to manage their applications in Cloud environments. However, each tool has its own kind of definitions and specifications on describing the applications in their platforms which creates vendor lock-in for its users and also hampers the portability features of Cloud applications. To solve this issue, TOSCA has been introduced to the industry by OASIS. The Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications (TOSCA) provides a standardization approach enabling portability of Cloud services between different Cloud Computing providers. The main goal of TOSCA is to model enterprise applications in a standardized and technology-independent way regardless of a specific Cloud provider or environment. To model and deploy applications using TOSCA properly, all required artifacts are packaged and bundled as TOSCA Cloud Service Archives (CSARs). Such CSARs are then used by Cloud orchestration engines to deploy the application to Cloud platforms. At the technology level, several deployment and cluster management approaches and tools are rapidly emerging such as Docker Compose, Docker Swarm, Kubernetes, Nomad, and Apache Mesos. Most of them are centered around containerization of middleware and application components. The focus of this thesis is to provide mapping concepts of TOSCA application topologies to a container-based deployment and management approach. Since Kubernetes and Docker are the most prominent open-source solutions in this field, we specifically consider Kubernetes and Docker as part of the prototype implementation. To assess feasibility of the proposed approach and usability of the system, we also provide case studies based on a motivating scenario

Enabling modular design of an application-level auto-scaling and orchestration framework using tosca-based application description templates

This paper presents a novel approach to writing TOSCA templates for application reusability and portability in a modular auto-scaling and orchestration framework (MiCADO). The approach defines cloud resources as well as application containers in a flexible and generic way, and allows for those definitions to be extended with specific properties related to a desired container orchestrator chosen at deployment time. The approach is demonstrated in a proof-of-concept where only a minor change was required to a previously used application template in order to achieve the successful deployment and lifecycle management of the popular web authoring tool Wordpress on a new realization of the MiCADO framework featuring a different container orchestrator