An Empirical Performance Analysis Of IaaS Clouds With CloudStone Web 2.0 Benchmarking Tool

Web 2.0 applications have become ubiquitous over the past few years because they provide useful features such as a rich, responsive graphical user interface that supports interactive and dynamic content. Social networking websites, blogs, auctions, online banking, online shopping and video sharing websites are noteworthy examples of Web 2.0 applications. The market for public cloud service providers is growing rapidly, and cloud providers offer an ever-growing list of services. As a result, developers and researchers find it challenging when deciding which public cloud service to use for deploying, experimenting or testing Web 2.0 applications. This study compares the scalability and performance of a social-events calendar application on two Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud services – Amazon EC2 and HP Cloud. This study captures and compares metrics on three different instance configurations for each cloud service such as the number of concurrent users (load), as well as response time and throughput (performance). Additionally, the total price of the three different instance configurations for each cloud service is calculated and compared. This comparison of the scalability, performance and price metrics provides developers and researchers with an insight into the scalability and performance characteristics of the three instance configurations for each cloud service, which simplifies the process of determining which cloud service and instance configuration to use for deploying their Web 2.0 applications. This study uses CloudStone – an open-source, three-tier web application benchmarking tool that simulates Web 2.0 application activities – as a realistic workload generator and to capture the intended metrics. The comparison of the collected metrics indicate that all of the tested Amazon EC2 instance configurations provide better scalability and lower latency at a lower cost than the respective HP Cloud instance configurations; however, the tested HP Cloud instance configurations provide a greater storage capacity than the Amazon EC2 instance configurations, which is an important consideration for data-intensive Web 2.0 applications

Empirical Evaluation of Cloud IAAS Platforms using System-level Benchmarks

Cloud Computing is an emerging paradigm in the field of computing where scalable IT enabled capabilities are delivered ‘as-a-service’ using Internet technology. The Cloud industry adopted three basic types of computing service models based on software level abstraction: Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Infrastructure-as-a-Service allows customers to outsource fundamental computing resources such as servers, networking, storage, as well as services where the provider owns and manages the entire infrastructure. This allows customers to only pay for the resources they consume. In a fast-growing IaaS market with multiple cloud platforms offering IaaS services, the user\u27s decision on the selection of the best IaaS platform is quite challenging. Therefore, it is very important for organizations to evaluate and compare the performance of different IaaS cloud platforms in order to minimize cost and maximize performance. Using a vendor-neutral approach, this research focused on four of the top IaaS cloud platforms- Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure, Google Compute Engine, and Rackspace cloud services. This research compared the performance of IaaS cloud platforms using system-level parameters including server, file I/O, and network. System-level benchmarking provides an objective comparison of the IaaS cloud platforms from performance perspective. Unixbench, Dbench, and Iperf are the system-level benchmarks chosen to test the performance of the server, file I/O, and network respectively. In order to capture the performance variability, the benchmark tests were performed at different time periods on weekdays and weekends. Each IaaS platform\u27s performance was also tested using various parameters. The benchmark tests conducted on different virtual machine (VM) configurations should help cloud users select the best IaaS platform for their needs. Also, based on their applications\u27 requirements, cloud users should get a clearer picture of which VM configuration they should choose. In addition to the performance evaluation, the price-per-performance value of all the IaaS cloud platforms was also examined

An infrastructure service recommendation system for cloud applications with real-time QoS requirement constraints

The proliferation of cloud computing has revolutionized the hosting and delivery of Internet-based application services. However, with the constant launch of new cloud services and capabilities almost every month by both big (e.g., Amazon Web Service and Microsoft Azure) and small companies (e.g., Rackspace and Ninefold), decision makers (e.g., application developers and chief information officers) are likely to be overwhelmed by choices available. The decision-making problem is further complicated due to heterogeneous service configurations and application provisioning QoS constraints. To address this hard challenge, in our previous work, we developed a semiautomated, extensible, and ontology-based approach to infrastructure service discovery and selection only based on design-time constraints (e.g., the renting cost, the data center location, the service feature, etc.). In this paper, we extend our approach to include the real-time (run-time) QoS (the end-to-end message latency and the end-to-end message throughput) in the decision-making process. The hosting of next-generation applications in the domain of online interactive gaming, large-scale sensor analytics, and real-time mobile applications on cloud services necessitates the optimization of such real-time QoS constraints for meeting service-level agreements. To this end, we present a real-time QoS-aware multicriteria decision-making technique that builds over the well-known analytic hierarchy process method. The proposed technique is applicable to selecting Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud offers, and it allows users to define multiple design-time and real-time QoS constraints or requirements. These requirements are then matched against our knowledge base to compute the possible best fit combinations of cloud services at the IaaS layer. We conducted extensive experiments to prove the feasibility of our approach

The case for "Open Access" communications infrastructure in Africa : the SAT-3/WASC cable - a briefing

This study examines the impact the SAT-3 fibre optic submarine cable has had on telecommunications in four African countries has found that the potential of the cable has not been properly exploited. Instead, ownership of the cable by telecoms incumbents in the countries researched has reinforced their market positions. The study analyses the effect ownership of the South Atlantic 3/West Africa Submarine Cable (SAT-3/WASC) has had on the communications markets in Angola, Cameroon, Ghana and Senegal. It focuses on the 'Africa section' of the submarine cable -running along the west coast of Africa down to southern Africa- with a specific emphasis on access and cost

Railway Reform in China.

The purpose of this working paper is to consider the current situation of Chinese Railways, the progress of reforms to date, and possible future developments. The first section describes the current problems of Chinese Railways, as a vast organisation subject to strong central control, facing enormous and rapidly growing demands which it is unable to satisfy. The progress of reform in Chinese Railways to date, and in particular the Economic Contract Responsibility System instituted in the late 1980's and the development of joint venture companies to build new lines, are then described. In the following section the key reform models found in other countries - deregulation and privatisation of vertically integrated regional companies; separation of infrastructure from operations with open access andlor franchising competitors; or reorganisation on the basis of business sectors - are then described. None is fully suitable for China, but it is suggested that a combination of sectorisation, more commercial independence, further development of joint public/private partnerships and more contracting out, is the most likely way forward