Formulating and managing viable SLAs in cloud computing from a small to medium service provider's viewpoint: A state-of-the-art review

In today's competitive world, service providers need to be customer-focused and proactive in their marketing strategies to create consumer awareness of their services. Cloud computing provides an open and ubiquitous computing feature in which a large random number of consumers can interact with providers and request services. In such an environment, there is a need for intelligent and efficient methods that increase confidence in the successful achievement of business requirements. One such method is the Service Level Agreement (SLA), which is comprised of service objectives, business terms, service relations, obligations and the possible action to be taken in the case of SLA violation. Most of the emphasis in the literature has, until now, been on the formation of meaningful SLAs by service consumers, through which their requirements will be met. However, in an increasingly competitive market based on the cloud environment, service providers too need a framework that will form a viable SLA, predict possible SLA violations before they occur, and generate early warning alarms that flag a potential lack of resources. This is because when a provider and a consumer commit to an SLA, the service provider is bound to reserve the agreed amount of resources for the entire period of that agreement – whether the consumer uses them or not. It is therefore very important for cloud providers to accurately predict the likely resource usage for a particular consumer and to formulate an appropriate SLA before finalizing an agreement. This problem is more important for a small to medium cloud service provider which has limited resources that must be utilized in the best possible way to generate maximum revenue. A viable SLA in cloud computing is one that intelligently helps the service provider to determine the amount of resources to offer to a requesting consumer, and there are number of studies on SLA management in the literature. The aim of this paper is two-fold. First, it presents a comprehensive overview of existing state-of-the-art SLA management approaches in cloud computing, and their features and shortcomings in creating viable SLAs from the service provider's viewpoint. From a thorough analysis, we observe that the lack of a viable SLA management framework renders a service provider unable to make wise decisions in forming an SLA, which could lead to service violations and violation penalties. To fill this gap, our second contribution is the proposal of the Optimized Personalized Viable SLA (OPV-SLA) framework which assists a service provider to form a viable SLA and start managing SLA violation before an SLA is formed and executed. The framework also assists a service provider to make an optimal decision in service formation and allocate the appropriate amount of marginal resources. We demonstrate the applicability of our framework in forming viable SLAs through experiments. From the evaluative results, we observe that our framework helps a service provider to form viable SLAs and later to manage them to effectively minimize possible service violation and penalties.     

OntoSLAt:本体支持的SLA建模及管理

服务等级协定SLA（Service Level Agreements）目前多样化网络服务中服务质量保障的重要手段，但SLA存在诸如缺乏统一信息模型、重用度低等问题，而语义网中的本体论为解决目前SLA中存在的问题提供了有效的技术支持．本文采用本体来对SLA模板进行建模，为SLA概念、参数和度量提供严格的、统一的和富含语义的定义．在此基础上，对如何利用本体来组织和构建SLA模板知识库（OntoSLAt）进行阐述．基于SLA本体的匹配算法可依据服务需求描述对相应网络服务进行有效的匹配，并给出基于QoS的选择；而SLA模板生成算法用于从SLA知识库中重构生成新的模板，以便有效地实现SLA重用．     

A fuzzy Grid-QoS framework for obtaining higher grid resources availability

A computational grid ensures the on-demand delivery of computing resources, in a security-aware, shared, scalable, and standards-based computing environment. A major concern is how to evolve a general and an encompassing framework that guarantees users’ satisfaction measured as Quality of Services (QoS). To obtain a higher QoS, effective QoS perceived by subscribers (users) must conform to specified QoS agreements in the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) document—a legal contract between the Grid Services Provider (GSP) and users. Sometimes the effective user QoS does not conform to the specifications in the SLA because of the vagueness in linguistic definitions in the SLA. Existing approaches overcommitted resources to meet QoS. In this paper, we propose a fuzzy logic framework for calibrating a grid resources user-QoS that addresses the vagueness in linguistic definitions of the SLA document without overcommitting grid resources.     

Service-level agreement–aware scheduling and load balancing of tasks in cloud

Cloud computing is an innovative computing paradigm designed to provide a flexible and low-cost way to deliver information technology services on demand over the Internet. Proper scheduling and load balancing of the resources are required for the efficient operations in the distributed cloud environment. Since cloud computing is growing rapidly and customers are demanding better performance and more services, scheduling and load balancing of the cloud resources have become very interesting and important area of research. As more and more consumers assign their tasks to cloud, service-level agreements (SLAs) between consumers and providers are emerging as an important aspect. The proposed prediction model is based on the past usage pattern and aims to provide optimal resource management without the violations of the agreed service-level conditions in cloud data centers. It considers SLA in both the initial scheduling stage and in the load balancing stage, and it looks into different objectives to achieve the minimum makespan, the minimum degree of imbalance, and the minimum number of SLA violations. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed system compared with other state-of-the-art algorithms.     

SLA-based operations of massively multiplayer online games in clouds

Successful massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) have today millions of registered users and hundreds of thousands of active concurrent players. To be able to guarantee quality of service (QoS) to a highly variable number of concurrent users, game operators statically over-provision a large infrastructure capable of sustaining the game peak load, even though a large portion of the resources is unused most of the time. To address this problem, we introduce in this work a new MMOG ecosystem for hosting and provisioning of MMOGs which effectively splits the traditional monolithic MMOG companies into three main service providers: game providers, game operators, and resource providers. Their interaction is regulated through comprehensive service level agreements (SLA) that establish the price, terms of operation, and compensation for service violations. In our model, game operators efficiently provision resources for MMOGs from multiple cloud providers, based on dynamic load forecasts, and ensure proper game operation that maintains the required QoS to all clients under varying resource availability. Game providers manage multiple distributed MMOGs for which they lease services under strict operational SLAs from game operators to satisfy all client requests. These three self-standing, smaller, more agile service providers enable access to the MMOG market for the small and medium enterprises, and to the current commercial cloud providers. We evaluate, through simulations based on real-life MMOG traces and commercial cloud SLAs, the impact of resource availability on the QoS offered to the MMOG clients. We find that our model can mitigate the negative effects of resource failures within four minutes and that MMOG server consolidation can accentuate the negative effects of failures in a resource-scarce environment. We further investigate different methods of ranking MMOG operational offers with either single or multiple (competing) MMOG providers. Our results show that compensations for SLA faults in the offer selection process can lead up to 11–16 % gain in the game providers’ income. We also demonstrate that adequate ranking of offers can lead to MMOG operational cost reductions from 20 up to 60 %.     

An SLA-based cloud computing that facilitates resource allocation in the distributed data centers of a cloud provider

The number of cloud service users has increased worldwide, and cloud service providers have been deploying and operating data centers to serve the globally distributed cloud users. The resource capacity of a data center is limited, so distributing the load to global data centers will be effective in providing stable services. Another issue in cloud computing is the need for providers to guarantee the service level agreements (SLAs) established with consumers. Whereas various load balancing algorithms have been developed, it is necessary to avoid SLA violations (e.g., service response time) when a cloud provider allocates the load to data centers geographically distributed across the world. Considering load balancing and guaranteed SLA, therefore, this paper proposes an SLA-based cloud computing framework to facilitate resource allocation that takes into account the workload and geographical location of distributed data centers. The contributions of this paper include: (1) the design of a cloud computing framework that includes an automated SLA negotiation mechanism and a workload- and location-aware resource allocation scheme (WLARA), and (2) the implementation of an agent-based cloud testbed of the proposed framework. Using the testbed, experiments were conducted to compare the proposed schemes with related approaches. Empirical results show that the proposed WLARA performs better than other related approaches (e.g., round robin, greedy, and manual allocation) in terms of SLA violations and the provider’s profits. We also show that using the automated SLA negotiation mechanism supports providers in earning higher profits.     

Resource management for bursty streams on multi-tenancy cloud environments

The number of applications that need to process data continuously over long periods of time has increased significantly over recent years. The emerging Internet of Things and Smart Cities scenarios also confirm the requirement for real time, large scale data processing. When data from multiple sources are processed over a shared distributed computing infrastructure, it is necessary to provide some Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees for each data stream, specified in a Service Level Agreement (SLA). SLAs identify the price that a user must pay to achieve the required QoS, and the penalty that the provider will pay the user in case of QoS violation. Assuming maximization of revenue as a Cloud provider’s objective, then it must decide which streams to accept for storage and analysis; and how many resources to allocate for each stream. When the real-time requirements demand a rapid reaction, dynamic resource provisioning policies and mechanisms may not be useful, since the delays and overheads incurred might be too high. Alternatively, idle resources that were initially allocated for other streams could be re-allocated, avoiding subsequent penalties. In this paper, we propose a system architecture for supporting QoS for concurrent data streams to be composed of self-regulating nodes. Each node features an envelope process for regulating and controlling data access and a resource manager to enable resource allocation, and selective SLA violations, while maximizing revenue. Our resource manager, based on a shared token bucket, enables: (i) the re-distribution of unused resources amongst data streams; and (ii) a dynamic re-allocation of resources to streams likely to generate greater profit for the provider. We extend previous work by providing a Petri-net based model of system components, and we evaluate our approach on an OpenNebula-based Cloud infrastructure.     

LTSS: Load-Adaptive Traffic Steering and Forwarding for Security Services in Multi-Tenant Cloud Datacenters

Currently, different kinds of security devices are deployed in the cloud datacenter environment and tenants may choose their desired security services such as firewall and IDS (intrusion detection system). At the same time, tenants in cloud computing datacenters are dynamic and have different requirements. Therefore, security device deployment in cloud datacenters is very complex and may lead to inefficient resource utilization. In this paper, we study this problem in a software-defined network (SDN) based multi-tenant cloud datacenter environment. We propose a load-adaptive traffic steering and packet forwarding scheme called LTSS to solve the problem. Our scheme combines SDN controller with TagOper plug-in to determine the traffic paths with the minimum load for tenants and allows tenants to get their desired security services in SDN-based datacenter networks. We also build a prototype system for LTSS to verify its functionality and evaluate performance of our design.     

云计算服务等级协议初探

云服务已经渗透到各行各业,如何保证其良性发展,如何让用户获得应有的服务质量成为摆在眼前的重要问题。服务等级协议作为一种服务提供商与用户之间协商并签订的一个具有法律约束力的合同,规定了在服务提供过程中双方所承担的商务条款,该协议的研究对云服务的健康持续发展有着重要意义。     

SLA negotiation and enforcement policies for revenue maximization and client classification in cloud providers

In Cloud Computing markets, owners of computing resources negotiate with their potential clients to sell computing power. The terms of the Quality of Service (QoS) to be provided as well as the economic conditions are established in a Service-Level Agreement (SLA). The common objective of a Cloud provider is to maximize its economic profit. However, there are situations in which providers must differentiate the SLAs with respect to the type of client that is willing to access the resources or the agreed QoS, e.g. when the hardware resources are shared between users of the company that own the resources and external users.This article proposes two sets of policies to manage SLAs with respect to the business objectives of a Cloud provider: Revenue Maximization or classification of clients. The criterion to classify clients is established according to the relationship between client and provider (external user, internal or another privileged relationship) and the QoS that the client purchases (cheap contracts or extra QoS by paying an extra fee). The validity of the policies is demonstrated through exhaustive experiments.     

Optimal precomputation for mapping service level agreements in grid computing

A complicated task running on the grid system is usually made up of many services, each of which typically offers a better service quality at a higher cost. Mapping service level agreements (SLAs) optimally is to find the most appropriate quality level for each service such that the overall SLA of a task is achieved at the minimum cost. This paper considers mapping the execution time SLA in the case of the discrete cost function, which is an NP-hard problem. Due to the high computation of mapping SLAs, we propose a precomputation scheme that makes the selection of each individual service level in advance for every possible SLA requirement, which can reduce the request response time greatly. We use a (1+ε)-approximation method, whose solution for any time bound is at most (1+ε) times of the optimal cost. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of our method compared with others.     

基于用户请求服务的QoS评价模型

进行SOA系统构建时,在选择同一功能服务不同物理实现的过程中,需要考虑用户适合度。提出根据用户需求确定服务QoS属性集的方法,该方法用扩展的WSDL协议描述服务QoS,量化服务QoS和用户QoS需求。构建基于用户请求的服务质量模型和相应算法,完成对最佳用户适合度服务物理实现的选择。     

The WSLA Framework: Specifying and Monitoring Service Level Agreements for Web Services

We describe a novel framework for specifying and monitoring Service Level Agreements (SLA) for Web Services. SLA monitoring and enforcement become increasingly important in a Web Service environment where enterprise applications and services rely on services that may be subscribed dynamically and on-demand. For economic and practical reasons, we want an automated provisioning process for both the service itself as well as the SLA managment system that measures and monitors the QoS parameters, checks the agreed-upon service levels, and reports violations to the authorized parties involved in the SLA management process. Our approach to these issues is presented in this paper. The Web Service Level Agreement (WSLA) framework is targeted at defining and monitoring SLAs for Web Services. Although WSLA has been designed for a Web Services environment, it is applicable as well to any inter-domain management scenario, such as business process and service management, or the management of networks, systems and applications in general. The WSLA framework consists of a flexible and extensible language based on XML Schema and a runtime architecture comprising several SLA monitoring services, which may be outsourced to third parties to ensure a maximum of objectivity. WSLA enables service customers and providers to unambiguously define a wide variety of SLAs, specify the SLA parameters and the way they are measured, and relate them to managed resource instrumentations. Upon receipt of an SLA specification, the WSLA monitoring services are automatically configured to enforce the SLA. An implementation of the WSLA framework, termed SLA Compliance Monitor, is publicly available as part of the IBM Web Services Toolkit.     

一种基于QoS的云负载均衡机制的研究

提出一种基于QoS的云负载均衡机制,即:构建QoS模型和云资源模型;建立资源度量与QoS属性之间的映射;对虚拟机实例负载状况和虚拟机集群资源利用状况进行量化评估;感知用户的QoS并对比所监控的云节点的资源度量情况,根据对比结果,通过任务调度算法和弹性伸缩算法分别实现任务的分发和虚拟机集群的弹性伸缩,最终达到优化的负载均衡的目的.通过模拟试验,结果表明本方法与Round robin算法相比,有更好的负载均衡效果.     

基于概率模型检验的云渲染任务调度定量验证

云渲染技术已被广泛应用于影视和动漫等行业.与传统的渲染农场和租赁市场模式不同，云渲染系统依托云计算基础设施提供多种软件服务进行渲染作业的方式，正逐渐成为新兴的计算模式.由于任务执行和资源操作等作业调度对于用户而言是透明的，这要求云渲染系统应具备智能化以实现计算资源优化调度和多端任务管理，并对系统可靠性提出了更高要求.针对这一问题，提出了采用概率模型检验对云渲染系统任务调度进行定量评估.首先，考虑渲染服务失效等因素引发的随机系统异常和指令错误，如文件损坏和渲染任务超时等，提出了基于离散马尔可夫链（DTMC）的概率模型对云渲染系统的文件准备模块、资源请求模块、渲染任务执行模块进行形式化建模；其次，从服务质量属性角度提出了9类验证性质用于定义云渲染系统的可靠性，采用概率计算树逻辑（PCTL）描述检验性质公式并执行工具PRISM计算和验证渲染系统可靠性；最后，结合案例和实验证明了该方法的可行性和有效性，尤其是对改进前后云渲染系统进行定量检验，可用于指导如何进行失效恢复和任务切换.因此，该方法在一定程度上可提高云渲染系统的可靠性.     

A bipolar resource management framework for resource provisioning in Cloud’s virtualized environment

Cloud’s profitability is mainly driven by the business, and on the other hand, a successful business is hardly geared with clients’ satisfaction. Therefore, there is high competition between cloud providers for satisfying clients and attracting more of them. In this way, long term business success factors should also be considered in addition to short term profit factors regarded in conventional resource provisioning procedures. Conventional resource management approaches to achieve short term profit inevitably lead to job rejection and violation from response time based SLAs while short response time and low job rejection are of those important factors to clients’ satisfaction. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel bipolar resource management framework which results in preventing from job rejection and having considerably reduced violations from response time based SLAs as well as providing short term profits. The proposed framework uses a neural network based predictor and genetic algorithm for optimal resource management through live migration. It also employs a prediction based temporal infinite pool, called the temporal cloud, which regards job rejection prevention. The evaluation of the proposed framework demonstrates that it can provide short term profits, beside it prevents from job rejection and reduces response time violations considerably.     

混合云中面向数据中心的工作流数据布局方法

科学工作流是一种复杂的数据密集型应用程序.如何在混合云环境中对数据进行有效布局,是科学工作流所面临的重要问题,尤其是混合云的安全性要求给科学云工作流数据布局研究带来了新的挑战.传统数据布局方法大多采用基于负载均衡的划分模型布局数据集,该方法可以获得很好的负载平衡布局,然而传输时间并非最优.针对传统数据布局方法的不足,并结合混合云中数据布局的特点,首先设计一种基于数据依赖破坏度的矩阵划分模型,生成对数据依赖度破坏最小的划分;然后提出一种面向数据中心的数据布局方法,该方法依据划分模型将依赖度高的数据集尽量放在同一数据中心,从而减少数据集跨数据中心的传输时间.实验结果表明,该方法能够有效地缩短科学工作流运行时跨数据中心的数据传输时间.     

Resource failures risk assessment modelling in distributed environments

Service providers offer access to resources and services in distributed environments such as Grids and Clouds through formal Service level Agreements (SLA), and need well-balanced infrastructures so that they can maximise the Quality of Service (QoS) they offer and minimise the number of SLA violations. We propose a mathematical model to predict the risk of failure of resources in such environments using a discrete-time analytical model driven by reliability functions fitted to observed data. The model relies on the resource historical data so as to predict the risk of failure for a given time interval. The model is evaluated by comparing the predicted risk of failure with the observed risk of failure, and is shown to accurately predict the resources risk of failure, allowing a service provider to selectively choose which SLA request to accept.     

Service level agreements for DiffServ-based services' provisioning

The evolution of mechanisms for providing Quality-of-Service (QoS) over the contemporary network infrastructures has introduced the need for regulation and management of the emerging QoS services with the use of Service Level Agreements (SLAs). SLAs define the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the services provided from a network provider to peering networks or customers. In this work, we define a template for the SLA structure to support the provision of a QoS service between two peering domains and then we proceed with the definition of an end-to-end SLA across consecutive domains, based on the bilateral ones. We also propose a model for the service provisioning procedures.     

基于混沌多目标粒子群优化算法的云服务选择

随着云计算环境中各种服务数量的急剧增长,如何从功能相同或相似的云服务中选择满足用户需求的服务成为云计算研究中亟待解决的关键问题。为此,建立带服务质量约束的多目标服务组合优化模型,针对传统多目标粒子群优化(MOPSO)算法中解的多样性差、易陷入局部最优等缺点,设计基于混沌多目标粒子群优化(CMOPSO)算法的云服务选择方法。采用信息熵理论来维护非支配解集,以保持解的多样性和分布的均匀性。当种群多样性丢失时,引入混沌扰动机制,以提高种群多样性和算法全局寻优能力,避免陷入局部最优。实验结果表明,与MOPSO算法相比,CMOPSO算法的收敛性和解集多样性均得到改善,能够更好地解决云计算环境下服务动态选择问题。