Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Approach for Container-based Cloud Applications: The SWITCH and ENTICE Workbenches

Many emerging smart applications rely on the Internet of Things (IoT) to provide solutions to time-critical problems. When building such applications, a software engineer must address multiple Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs), including requirements for fast response time, low communication latency, high throughput, high energy efficiency, low operational cost and similar. Existing modern container-based software engineering approaches promise to improve the software lifecycle; however, they fail short of tools and mechanisms for NFRs management and optimisation. Our work addresses this problem with a new decision-making approach based on a Pareto Multi-Criteria optimisation. By using different instance configurations on various geo-locations, we demonstrate the suitability of our method, which narrows the search space to only optimal instances for the deployment of the containerised microservice.This solution is included in two advanced software engineering environments, the SWITCH workbench, which includes an Interactive Development Environment (IDE) and the ENTICE Virtual Machine and container images portal. The developed approach is particularly useful when building, deploying and orchestrating IoT applications across multiple computing tiers, from Edge-Cloudlet to Fog-Cloud data centres

Interactive application for multi-touch surface

The goal of this thesis is the implementation of an interactive web application, an info point, which could run on a multitouch surface created at the ViCoS lab at Faculty of Computer and Information Science. The developed interactive web application InfoFRI point represents a virtual signpost for the faculty's rooms by drawing an interactive paths on the floor plan of the faculty building and the building of object X, starting at the faculty's lobby in the 1st floor and continuing up to the specific room. Another web application was created in the scope of the thesis in order to ease the manipulation and editing of the InfoFRI point database. Both web applications were implemented in web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript (jQuery). In order to comply with the requirements of the multitouch surface for storing data in JSON and to introduce lightweight databases, a document-oriented database CouchDB was implemented

Interactive application for multi-touch surface

The goal of this thesis is the implementation of an interactive web application, an info point, which could run on a multitouch surface created at the ViCoS lab at Faculty of Computer and Information Science. The developed interactive web application InfoFRI point represents a virtual signpost for the faculty's rooms by drawing an interactive paths on the floor plan of the faculty building and the building of object X, starting at the faculty's lobby in the 1st floor and continuing up to the specific room. Another web application was created in the scope of the thesis in order to ease the manipulation and editing of the InfoFRI point database. Both web applications were implemented in web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript (jQuery). In order to comply with the requirements of the multitouch surface for storing data in JSON and to introduce lightweight databases, a document-oriented database CouchDB was implemented

Towards an Environment for Efficient and Transparent Virtual Machine Operations: The ENTICE Approach

Cloud computing is based on Virtual Machines (VM) or containers, which provide their own software execution environment that can be deployed by facilitating technologies on top of various physical hardware. The use of VMs or containers represents an efficient way to automatize the overall software engineering and operation life-cycle. Some of the benefits include elasticity and high scalability, which increases the utilization efficiency and decreases the operational costs. VMs or containers as software artifacts are created using provider-specific templates and are stored in proprietary or public repositories for further use. However, technology specific choices may reduce their portability, lead to a vendor lock-in, particularly when applications need to run in federated Clouds. In this paper we present the current state of development of the novel concept of a VM repository and operational environment for federated Clouds named ENTICE. The ENTICE environment has been designed to receive unmodified and functionally complete VM images from its users, and transparently tailor and optimise them for specific Cloud infrastructures with respect to their size, configuration, and geographical distribution, such that they are loaded, delivered, and executed faster and with improved QoS compared to their current behaviour. Furthermore, in this work a specific use case scenario for the ENTICE environment has been provided and the underlying novel technologies have been presented

Sonačrtovanje oblačnih aplikacij z upoštevanjem kakovosti storitev

Applications that make use of Internet of Things (IoT) capture an enormous amount of raw data from fixed and dynamically located sensors and devices. Currently, IoT devices send data directly to the cloud systems for processing to benefit from high availability, scalability, unlimited storage and pooled computing resources on the pay-per-use models. Due to ever-increasing and unpredictable data generation rates and varying demands of Iot-based applications on compute resources, sending the data towards the clouds can result in high latency, transmission costs and privacy issues which cannot efficiently support the overall Quality of Service (QoS) of latency-critical microservice-oriented applications. Recently, the emergence of Fog and Edge computing has enabled to move the services, data and processing power towards the network edge. However, there is lack of QoS-aware approaches that would fully address the QoS-aware reconfigurability of on-demand compute resources and service placement along Cloud-To-Things Computing Continuum. For this purpose, we propose a new P-Match method for QoS-aware distributed deployment and continuous adaptation of interactive and latency-critical applications composed of microservices. The P-Match method as an input data considers metrics obtained from virtual infrastructure monitoring and returns a set of QoS-aware infrastructure deployment options for the deployment of microservice-oriented applications. The P-Match method utilises a subgraph isomorphism matching that is based on requirements and resource matchmaking of an applications\u27 components constraints towards the multi-level QoS metrics related to the Cloud-To-Things Continuum. The overall comparison of the P-Match method with MDP method also suitable for continuous adaptation reveals that for the particular set of microservices\u27 constraints both methods proposed continuous deployment that satisfied the given QoS constraints. Though both methods gave QoS-aware solutions and satisfied the requirements, P-Match returned four times less powerful deployment options regarding infrastructure-level metric and consequently made more sustainable decision yet still enough to satisfy the particular QoS constraints. Since P-Match reached the same or better solutions than MDP method it obviously proves its correctness. Due to its lightweight nature, the P-Match method is suitable for the integration into service modelling frameworks and can be utilised particularly in the provisioning phase to support service placement, tasks and jobs scheduling and execution to specific (virtual) instances to satisfy application\u27s QoS and contributes to the sustainable usage of compute resources, adjusts latency of microservices based on their requirements and data processing at instances where it is the most meaningful.Aplikacije, ki podpirajo internet stvari, zajemajo ogromne količine neobdelanih podatkov iz fiksnih in dinamičnih senzorjev ali naprav. Zaradi različnih zahtev mikrostoritvenih aplikacij po računskih virih, ki se lahko dinamično ter nepričakovano spreminjajo v realnem času in ki jih aplikacije potrebujejo za obdelavo podatkov, je postala potreba po izvajanju mikrostoritvenih aplikacij ter (re)konfiguraciji potrebnih računskih virov z namenom vzdrževanja kakovosti storitve teh aplikacij kritična. Aplikacije z večjimi zahtevami po računskih virih in obdelavi večje količne podatkov je možno poslati v podatkovne centre v oblakih, kjer so na razpolago visoka zmogljivost računskih virov, neomejen prostor za shranjevanje, visoka dostopnost. Podatkovni centri v oblakih se nahajajo najdlje od interneta stvari. Kljub velikim računskim zmogljivostim, pa je lahko obdelava vseh podatkov le v podatkovnih centrih cenovno draga in logistično zahtevna, kar se pozna pri daljšem odzivnem času aplikacij, večjih stroških prenosa ter nizke varnosti podatkov, zaradi česar kakovost storitve predvsem časovno kritičnih aplikacij ne more biti več ustrezno podprta. Ena izmed možnosti za obravnavo tovrstnega problema je decentralizacija mikrostoritvenih aplikacij. Razvoj računalništva v megli je omogočilo izvajanje storitev, procesiranje in analizo podatkov na robu omrežja, blizu interneta stvari, kar bi pomenilo nižji odzivni čas aplikacij in večjo varnost podatkov. Kljub velikemu raziskovalnemu interesu, obstaja še vedno veliko pomanjkanje učinkovitih pristopov, ki bi v celoti naslovili rekonfigurabilnost in izboljšano rabo računskih virov ter izbiro virtualnih instanc za namestitev mikrostoritev vzdolž računalništva v megli in oblaku. Namen doktorske disertacije je razvoj nove metode P-Match za izboljšano razporejanje in izvajanje mikrostoritev na instancah blizu interneta stvari ali v oblaku. Dinamično razporejanje mikrostoritev med podatkovnimi centri ter internetom stvari glede na zahteve po računskih virih, pomeni neprekinjeno prilagajaje računskih virov in posledično vzdrževanje kakovosti storitve časovno-kritičnih aplikacij. Metoda kot vhodne podatke prejme metrike pridobljene z monitoringom virtualne infrastrukture ter vrne set ustreznih (virtualnih) instanc za namestitev mikrostoritvene aplikacije. Metoda P-Match deluje na podlagi podgrafnega izomorfizma, ki temelji na ujemanju potrebe po računskih virih mikrostoritev z razpoložljivimi računskimi viri na infrastrukturi. Vrednotenje in primerjava metode P-Match s podobno metodo MPD, prav tako primerno za izboljšano razporejanje mikrostoritev, je pokazala, da za določen sklop zahtev mikrostoritev po računskih virih obe metodi predlagata takšno razporeditev mikrostoritev, ki zadošča vnaprej določenim zahtevam aplikacije ter vzdržuje izboljšano kvaliteto storitve. Čeprav sta obe metodi zadostili zahtevam, je metoda P-Match vrnila enake ali celo boljše rezultate v nekoliko hitrejšem času. Metoda P-Match je zaradi hitrega izvajanja primerna za integracijo v orodja za kreiranje mikrostoritev ter uporabo v fazi planiranja in prispeva k trajnostni rabi računskih virov, prilagaja odzivni čas mikrostoritev glede na njihove zahteve ter obdelavo podatkov tam, kjer je najbolj smiselna

Interactive application for multi-touch surface

Cilj diplomskega dela je bil izdelati interaktivno spletno informacijsko točko FRI za delovanje na večdotični površini, razviti na Fakulteti za računalništvo in informatiko (FRI). Razvita interaktivna spletna aplikacija InfoFRI točka predstavlja virtualni kažipot po fakulteti do vseh prostorov, in sicer z izrisovanjem interaktivnih poti na tlorisih zgradbe FRI in objekta X od začetne točke v avli fakultete vse do iskanega prostora. Za lažje in enostavnejše urejanje podatkovne baze InfoFRI točke je bila razvita še zaledna spletna aplikacija InfoFRI admin. Obe aplikaciji sta narejeni v spletnih tehnologijah HTML5, CSS3 in JavaScript (jQuery). Z namenom predstaviti novejši tip nerelacijskih podatkovnih baz in upoštevajoč zahteve večdotične površine za shranjevanje podatkov v dokumentu JSON, smo implementirali podatkovno bazo CouchDB, v diplomskem delu pa poleg CouchDB predstavili še nerelacijske podatkovne baze NoSQL.The goal of this thesis is the implementation of an interactive web application, an info point, which could run on a multitouch surface created at the ViCoS lab at Faculty of Computer and Information Science. The developed interactive web application InfoFRI point represents a virtual signpost for the faculty\u27s rooms by drawing an interactive paths on the floor plan of the faculty building and the building of object X, starting at the faculty\u27s lobby in the 1st floor and continuing up to the specific room. Another web application was created in the scope of the thesis in order to ease the manipulation and editing of the InfoFRI point database. Both web applications were implemented in web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript (jQuery). In order to comply with the requirements of the multitouch surface for storing data in JSON and to introduce lightweight databases, a document-oriented database CouchDB was implemented

Interactive application for multi-touch surface

Cilj diplomskega dela je bil izdelati interaktivno spletno informacijsko točko FRI za delovanje na večdotični površini, razviti na Fakulteti za računalništvo in informatiko (FRI). Razvita interaktivna spletna aplikacija InfoFRI točka predstavlja virtualni kažipot po fakulteti do vseh prostorov, in sicer z izrisovanjem interaktivnih poti na tlorisih zgradbe FRI in objekta X od začetne točke v avli fakultete vse do iskanega prostora. Za lažje in enostavnejše urejanje podatkovne baze InfoFRI točke je bila razvita še zaledna spletna aplikacija InfoFRI admin. Obe aplikaciji sta narejeni v spletnih tehnologijah HTML5, CSS3 in JavaScript (jQuery). Z namenom predstaviti novejši tip nerelacijskih podatkovnih baz in upoštevajoč zahteve večdotične površine za shranjevanje podatkov v dokumentu JSON, smo implementirali podatkovno bazo CouchDB, v diplomskem delu pa poleg CouchDB predstavili še nerelacijske podatkovne baze NoSQL.The goal of this thesis is the implementation of an interactive web application, an info point, which could run on a multitouch surface created at the ViCoS lab at Faculty of Computer and Information Science. The developed interactive web application InfoFRI point represents a virtual signpost for the faculty\u27s rooms by drawing an interactive paths on the floor plan of the faculty building and the building of object X, starting at the faculty\u27s lobby in the 1st floor and continuing up to the specific room. Another web application was created in the scope of the thesis in order to ease the manipulation and editing of the InfoFRI point database. Both web applications were implemented in web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript (jQuery). In order to comply with the requirements of the multitouch surface for storing data in JSON and to introduce lightweight databases, a document-oriented database CouchDB was implemented