44,141 research outputs found
Using real options to select stable Middleware-induced software architectures
The requirements that force decisions towards building distributed system architectures are usually of a non-functional nature. Scalability, openness, heterogeneity, and fault-tolerance are examples of such non-functional requirements. The current trend is to build distributed systems with middleware, which provide the application developer with primitives for managing the complexity of distribution, system resources, and for realising many of the non-functional requirements. As non-functional requirements evolve, the `coupling' between the middleware and architecture becomes the focal point for understanding the stability of the distributed software system architecture in the face of change. It is hypothesised that the choice of a stable distributed software architecture depends on the choice of the underlying middleware and its flexibility in responding to future changes in non-functional requirements. Drawing on a case study that adequately represents a medium-size component-based distributed architecture, it is reported how a likely future change in scalability could impact the architectural structure of two versions, each induced with a distinct middleware: one with CORBA and the other with J2EE. An option-based model is derived to value the flexibility of the induced-architectures and to guide the selection. The hypothesis is verified to be true for the given change. The paper concludes with some observations that could stimulate future research in the area of relating requirements to software architectures
Datacenter Traffic Control: Understanding Techniques and Trade-offs
Datacenters provide cost-effective and flexible access to scalable compute
and storage resources necessary for today's cloud computing needs. A typical
datacenter is made up of thousands of servers connected with a large network
and usually managed by one operator. To provide quality access to the variety
of applications and services hosted on datacenters and maximize performance, it
deems necessary to use datacenter networks effectively and efficiently.
Datacenter traffic is often a mix of several classes with different priorities
and requirements. This includes user-generated interactive traffic, traffic
with deadlines, and long-running traffic. To this end, custom transport
protocols and traffic management techniques have been developed to improve
datacenter network performance.
In this tutorial paper, we review the general architecture of datacenter
networks, various topologies proposed for them, their traffic properties,
general traffic control challenges in datacenters and general traffic control
objectives. The purpose of this paper is to bring out the important
characteristics of traffic control in datacenters and not to survey all
existing solutions (as it is virtually impossible due to massive body of
existing research). We hope to provide readers with a wide range of options and
factors while considering a variety of traffic control mechanisms. We discuss
various characteristics of datacenter traffic control including management
schemes, transmission control, traffic shaping, prioritization, load balancing,
multipathing, and traffic scheduling. Next, we point to several open challenges
as well as new and interesting networking paradigms. At the end of this paper,
we briefly review inter-datacenter networks that connect geographically
dispersed datacenters which have been receiving increasing attention recently
and pose interesting and novel research problems.Comment: Accepted for Publication in IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorial
Internet's Critical Path Horizon
Internet is known to display a highly heterogeneous structure and complex
fluctuations in its traffic dynamics. Congestion seems to be an inevitable
result of user's behavior coupled to the network dynamics and it effects should
be minimized by choosing appropriate routing strategies. But what are the
requirements of routing depth in order to optimize the traffic flow? In this
paper we analyse the behavior of Internet traffic with a topologically
realistic spatial structure as described in a previous study (S-H. Yook et al.
,Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA, {\bf 99} (2002) 13382). The model involves
self-regulation of packet generation and different levels of routing depth. It
is shown that it reproduces the relevant key, statistical features of
Internet's traffic. Moreover, we also report the existence of a critical path
horizon defining a transition from low-efficient traffic to highly efficient
flow. This transition is actually a direct consequence of the web's small world
architecture exploited by the routing algorithm. Once routing tables reach the
network diameter, the traffic experiences a sudden transition from a
low-efficient to a highly-efficient behavior. It is conjectured that routing
policies might have spontaneously reached such a compromise in a distributed
manner. Internet would thus be operating close to such critical path horizon.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures. To appear in European Journal of Physics B (2004
A Survey on Load Balancing Algorithms for VM Placement in Cloud Computing
The emergence of cloud computing based on virtualization technologies brings
huge opportunities to host virtual resource at low cost without the need of
owning any infrastructure. Virtualization technologies enable users to acquire,
configure and be charged on pay-per-use basis. However, Cloud data centers
mostly comprise heterogeneous commodity servers hosting multiple virtual
machines (VMs) with potential various specifications and fluctuating resource
usages, which may cause imbalanced resource utilization within servers that may
lead to performance degradation and service level agreements (SLAs) violations.
To achieve efficient scheduling, these challenges should be addressed and
solved by using load balancing strategies, which have been proved to be NP-hard
problem. From multiple perspectives, this work identifies the challenges and
analyzes existing algorithms for allocating VMs to PMs in infrastructure
Clouds, especially focuses on load balancing. A detailed classification
targeting load balancing algorithms for VM placement in cloud data centers is
investigated and the surveyed algorithms are classified according to the
classification. The goal of this paper is to provide a comprehensive and
comparative understanding of existing literature and aid researchers by
providing an insight for potential future enhancements.Comment: 22 Pages, 4 Figures, 4 Tables, in pres
Software-Defined Cloud Computing: Architectural Elements and Open Challenges
The variety of existing cloud services creates a challenge for service
providers to enforce reasonable Software Level Agreements (SLA) stating the
Quality of Service (QoS) and penalties in case QoS is not achieved. To avoid
such penalties at the same time that the infrastructure operates with minimum
energy and resource wastage, constant monitoring and adaptation of the
infrastructure is needed. We refer to Software-Defined Cloud Computing, or
simply Software-Defined Clouds (SDC), as an approach for automating the process
of optimal cloud configuration by extending virtualization concept to all
resources in a data center. An SDC enables easy reconfiguration and adaptation
of physical resources in a cloud infrastructure, to better accommodate the
demand on QoS through a software that can describe and manage various aspects
comprising the cloud environment. In this paper, we present an architecture for
SDCs on data centers with emphasis on mobile cloud applications. We present an
evaluation, showcasing the potential of SDC in two use cases-QoS-aware
bandwidth allocation and bandwidth-aware, energy-efficient VM placement-and
discuss the research challenges and opportunities in this emerging area.Comment: Keynote Paper, 3rd International Conference on Advances in Computing,
Communications and Informatics (ICACCI 2014), September 24-27, 2014, Delhi,
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