A template description framework for services as a utility for cloud brokerage

Integration and mediation are two core functions that a cloud service broker needs to perform. The description of services involved plays a central role in this endeavour to enable services to be considered as commoditised utilities. We propose a conceptual framework for a cloud service broker based on two parts: a reference architecture for cloud brokers and a service description template that describes the mediated and integrated cloud services. Structural aspects of that template will be identified, formalised in an ontology and mapped onto a set of sublanguages that can be aligned to the cloud development and deployment process

Workload patterns for quality-driven dynamic cloud service configuration and auto-scaling

Cloud service providers negotiate SLAs for customer services they offer based on the reliability of performance and availability of their lower-level platform infrastructure. While availability management is more mature, performance management is less reliable. In order to support an iterative approach that supports the initial static infrastructure configuration as well as dynamic reconfiguration and auto-scaling, an accurate and efficient solution is required. We propose a prediction-based technique that combines a pattern matching approach with a traditional collaborative filtering solution to meet the accuracy and efficiency requirements. Service workload patterns abstract common infrastructure workloads from monitoring logs and act as a part of a first-stage high-performant configuration mechanism before more complex traditional methods are considered. This enhances current reactive rule-based scalability approaches and basic prediction techniques based on for example exponential smoothing

Service workload patterns for QoS-driven cloud resource management

Cloud service providers negotiate SLAs for customer services they offer based on the reliability of performance and availability of their lower-level platform infrastructure. While availability management is more mature, performance management is less reliable. In order to support a continuous approach that supports the initial static infrastructure configuration as well as dynamic reconfiguration and auto-scaling, an accurate and efficient solution is required. We propose a prediction technique that combines a workload pattern mining approach with a traditional collaborative filtering solution to meet the accuracy and efficiency requirements. Service workload patterns abstract common infrastructure workloads from monitoring logs and act as a part of a first-stage high-performant configuration mechanism before more complex traditional methods are considered. This enhances current reactive rule-based scalability approaches and basic prediction techniques by a hybrid prediction solution. Uncertainty and noise are additional challenges that emerge in multi-layered, often federated cloud architectures. We specifically add log smoothing combined with a fuzzy logic approach to make the prediction solution more robust in the context of these challenges

Architecture-Level Software Performance Models for Online Performance Prediction

Proactive performance and resource management of modern IT infrastructures requires the ability to predict at run-time, how the performance of running services would be affected if the workload or the system changes. In this thesis, modeling and prediction facilities that enable online performance prediction during system operation are presented. Analyses about the impact of reconfigurations and workload trends can be conducted on the model level, without executing expensive performance tests