Towards an autonomic performance management approach for a cloud broker environment using a decomposition–coordination based methodology

Efficient resource allocation of computational resources to services is one of the predominant challenges in a cloud computing environment. Furthermore, the advent of cloud brokerage and federated cloud computing systems increases the complexity of cloud resource management. Cloud brokers are considered third party organizations that work as intermediaries between the service providers and the cloud providers. Cloud brokers rent different types of cloud resources from a number of cloud providers and sublet these resources to the requesting service providers. In this paper, an autonomic performance management approach is introduced that provides dynamic resource allocation capabilities for deploying a set of services over a federated cloud computing infrastructure by considering the availability as well as the demand of the cloud computing resources. A distributed control based approach is used for providing autonomic computing features to the proposed framework via a feedback-based control loop. This distributed control based approach is developed using one of the decomposition–coordination methodologies, named interaction balance, for interactive bidding of cloud computing resources. The primary goals of the proposed approach are to maintain the service level agreements, maximize the profit, and minimize the operating cost for the service providers and the cloud broker. The application of interaction balance methodology and prioritization of profit maximization for the cloud broker and the service providers during resource allocation are novel contributions of the proposed approach.     

Security and Control in the Cloud

ABSTRACT

Cloud computing is a new IT delivery paradigm that offers computing resources as on-demand services over the Internet. Like all forms of outsourcing, cloud computing raises serious concerns about the security of the data assets that are outsourced to providers of cloud services. To address these security concerns, we show how today's generation of information security management systems (ISMSs), as specified in the ISO/IEC 27001:2005, must be extended to address the transfer of security controls into cloud environments. The resulting virtual ISMS is a standards-compliant management approach for developing a sound control environment while supporting the various modalities of cloud computing.

This article addresses chief security and/or information officers of cloud client and cloud provider organizations. Cloud clients will benefit from our exposition of how to manage risk when corporate assets are outsourced to cloud providers. Providers of cloud services will learn what processes and controls they can offer in order to provide superior security that differentiates their offerings in the market.     

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.     

一种云计算的虚拟网络管理系统

云计算技术是IT产业界的一场技术革命,已经成为IT行业未来发展的方向,这种变化使得IT基础架构的运营专业化程度不断集中和提高。在云计算的使用中,云计算使用者缺乏对于网络的配置能力,这部分目前并没有开放给用户所使用。虽然云计算的虚拟网络服务已经受到了更多云计算提供商的关注,但是目前对这方面的支持还处于不完善的阶段。本文提出了一种基于云计算的虚拟网络管理系统,本系统能够以动态的方式为用户提供基于云计算的网络服务,可以根据用户需求实现虚拟网络配置,并加以优化,以便最大限度地提高虚拟网络的性能。     

DEPAS: a decentralized probabilistic algorithm for auto-scaling

The dynamic provisioning of virtualized resources offered by cloud computing infrastructures allows applications deployed in a cloud environment to automatically increase and decrease the amount of used resources. This capability is called auto-scaling and its main purpose is to automatically adjust the scale of the system that is running the application to satisfy the varying workload with minimum resource utilization. The need for auto-scaling is particularly important during workload peaks, in which applications may need to scale up to extremely large-scale systems. Both the research community and the main cloud providers have already developed auto-scaling solutions. However, most research solutions are centralized and not suitable for managing large-scale systems, moreover cloud providers’ solutions are bound to the limitations of a specific provider in terms of resource prices, availability, reliability, and connectivity. In this paper we propose DEPAS, a decentralized probabilistic auto-scaling algorithm integrated into a P2P architecture that is cloud provider independent, thus allowing the auto-scaling of services over multiple cloud infrastructures at the same time. Our experiments (simulations and real deployments), which are based on real service traces, show that our approach is capable of: (i) keeping the overall utilization of all the instantiated cloud resources in a target range, (ii) maintaining service response times close to the ones obtained using optimal centralized auto-scaling approaches.     

基于IaaS云计算的高效服务器管理相关问题探析

IaaS(Infrastructure as a Service)基础设施即服务是进行云服务的基础工作部分,通过这种基础服务设施可以对多种数据资源进行资源池优化,真正做到最低成本同时又能够满足各种外部资源服务。首先对IaaS云计算的相关概念进行了阐述,并与传统VPS业务进行了对比,在此基础上对基于IaaS云计算的高效服务器管理相关问题进行了探讨。     

T—YUN：云提供商可信性审计与验证

云计算被广泛认为是信息技术发展的必然趋势。然而,由于在云计算模式下用户失去了对托管在云端的数据和应用的直接控制能力,产生了云服务的可信性问题,严重影响了云计算与云服务的推广。文章设计实现了一种新的通过可信第三方TTP（TrustedTMrdParty）对云提供商可信性进行审计和验证的模型。为了防止TTP成为单点瓶颈或单点故障,通过云计算技术构建TTP云验证平台实现了原型系统,并对其进行定量测试、分析和评价。实验结果表明,T—YUN在有效验证可信性的同时没有引入过多的额外代价。     

Ontology-based access control model for security policy reasoning in cloud computing

There are many security issues in cloud computing service environments, including virtualization, distributed big-data processing, serviceability, traffic management, application security, access control, authentication, and cryptography, among others. In particular, data access using various resources requires an authentication and access control model for integrated management and control in cloud computing environments. Cloud computing services are differentiated according to security policies because of differences in the permitted access right between service providers and users. RBAC (Role-based access control) and C-RBAC (Context-aware RBAC) models do not suggest effective and practical solutions for managers and users based on dynamic access control methods, suggesting a need for a new model of dynamic access control that can address the limitations of cloud computing characteristics. This paper proposes Onto-ACM (ontology-based access control model), a semantic analysis model that can address the difference in the permitted access control between service providers and users. The proposed model is a model of intelligent context-aware access for proactively applying the access level of resource access based on ontology reasoning and semantic analysis method.     

Interference Analysis of Co-Located Container Workloads: A Perspective from Hardware Performance Counters

Workload characterization is critical for resource management and scheduling.Recently,with the fast development of container technique,more and more cloud service providers like Google and Alibaba adopt containers to provide cloud services,due to the low overheads.However,the characteristics of co-located diverse services(e.g.,interactive on-line services,off-line computing services)running in containers are still not clear.In this paper,we present a comprehensive analysis of the characteristics of co-located workloads running in containers on the same server from the perspective of hardware events.Our study quantifies and reveals the system behavior from the micro-architecture level when workloads are running in different co-location patterns.Through the analysis of typical hardware events,we provide recommended/unrecommended co-location workload patterns which provide valuable deployment suggestions for datacenter administrators.     

A cloud middleware for assuring performance and high availability of soft real-time applications

Applications are increasingly being deployed in the cloud due to benefits stemming from economy of scale, scalability, flexibility and utility-based pricing model. Although most cloud-based applications have hitherto been enterprise-style, there is an emerging need for hosting real-time streaming applications in the cloud that demand both high availability and low latency. Contemporary cloud computing research has seldom focused on solutions that provide both high availability and real-time assurance to these applications in a way that also optimizes resource consumption in data centers, which is a key consideration for cloud providers. This paper makes three contributions to address this dual challenge. First, it describes an architecture for a fault-tolerant framework that can be used to automatically deploy replicas of virtual machines in data centers in a way that optimizes resources while assuring availability and responsiveness. Second, it describes the design of a pluggable framework within the fault-tolerant architecture that enables plugging in different placement algorithms for VM replica deployment. Third, it illustrates the design of a framework for real-time dissemination of resource utilization information using a real-time publish/subscribe framework, which is required by the replica selection and placement framework. Experimental results using a case study that involves a specific replica placement algorithm are presented to evaluate the effectiveness of our architecture.     

IaaS云安全研究综述

目前,在新一代大规模互联网迅猛发展的背景下,产生的数据量也随之持续增长,这就导致用户的本地设备难以满足海量数据的存储和计算需求。与此同时,云计算作为一种经济高效且灵活的模式,具有易于使用、随用随付、不受时间和空间限制的优势,彻底改变了传统IT基础设施的提供和支付方式,可以有效解决无限增长的海量信息存储和计算问题。因此,在没有昂贵的存储成本和计算资源消耗的情况下,资源有限的用户可以采用云服务提供商（CloudServiceProvider,CSP）为用户提供所期望的服务。其中,基础设施即服务（Infrastructure as a Service, IaaS）作为云计算的三种服务类型之一,将虚拟化、分布式计算和网络存储等技术结合,可以在互联网上提供和租用计算基础设施资源服务（如计算、存储和网络）。故云计算依靠Iaa S层提供的计算基础设施资源,使用户不再需要购买额外设备,从而大大降低使用成本,同时也为上层服务奠定基础。然而,随着云计算服务的不断发展,基于IaaS的安全问题引起人们的关注。为了系统了解Iaa S的安全研究进展和现状,本文对IaaS的安全问题以及学术界和工业界的解决方案进行了...     

Sky Computing

Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud computing is revolutionizing how we approach computing. Compute resource consumers can eliminate the expense inherent in acquiring, managing, and operating IT infrastructure and instead lease resources on a pay-as-you-go basis. IT infrastructure providers can exploit economies of scale to mitigate the cost of buying and operating resources and avoid the complexity required to manage multiple customer-specific environments and applications. The authors describe the context in which cloud computing arose, discuss its current strengths and shortcomings, and point to an emerging computing pattern it enables that they call sky computing.     

云计算在电子政务系统中的应用研究

云计算是指IP技术架构下的网络计算,云计算技术将不仅提供传统意义的IT资源和应用服务,而且将支持包括IT、通信、电视、移动和物联等一切互联网技术融合后的资源使用和业务应用。本文着重介绍云计算数据库的基本思想和实现过程中需要解决的基本问题,论述利用云计算构建电子政务系统的模型和实现方案。云计算以其安全可靠的数据存储和强大的计算能力,必将对电子政务系统的信息化建设产生积极的影响。     

云计算实训中心模式构建之探讨

通过对传统网络构造现状分析,不能满足虚拟化及云计算的要求,通过云技术改变IT模式,让全局的IT资源更灵活、更高效、更经济的进行统一调配,同时提出了一种云计算模型架构,达到支持异构资源和实现资源的动态流转,可以更好的利用资源,降低基础资源供应商成本的目的。     

Proactive workload management in dynamic virtualized environments

Recently, with the improvement of Cloud systems technologies and the essential advantages they can provide such as availability, scalability, and costs saving; massive domains in the IT industry are directing their business to the Cloud. To fit the computing demands of this trend along with nowadays fluky applications (e.g. social networks, media contents), Cloud systems require rapid resource changes. As a result, the workload management in a virtualized environment becomes a complex task. In this paper we propose a new proactive workload management model for virtualized resources to inspect the workload behavior of the running Virtual Machines, and to assent an appropriate scheduling and resource consolidation schema in order to improve the system efficiency, utilization, and throughput. We have carried out our model by modifying Xen Cloud Platform, then we tested the model performance through different representative benchmarks. The results show that the Proactive model can decrease the average response time remarkably.     

A systematic review on cloud computing

Cloud computing is an ascending technology that has introduced a new paradigm by rendering a rational computational model possible. It has changed the dynamics of IT consumption by means of a model that provides on-demand services over the Internet. Unlike the traditional hosting service, cloud computing services are paid for per usage and may expand or shrink based on demand. Such services are, in general, fully managed by cloud providers that require users nothing but a personal computer and an Internet access. In recent years, this model has attracted the attention of researchers, investors and practitioners, many of whom have proposed a number of applications, structures and fundamentals of cloud computing, resulting in various definitions, requirements and models. Despite the interest and advances in the field, issues such as security and privacy, service layer agreement, resource sharing, and billing have opened up new questions about the real gains of the model. Although cloud computing is based on a 50-year-old business model, evidence from this study indicates that cloud computing still needs to expand and overcome present limitations that prevent the full use of its potential. In this study, we critically review the state of the art in cloud computing with the aim of identifying advances, gaps and new challenges.     

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.     

From cloud computing to cloud manufacturing

Cloud computing is changing the way industries and enterprises do their businesses in that dynamically scalable and virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. This model creates a brand new opportunity for enterprises. In this paper, some of the essential features of cloud computing are briefly discussed with regard to the end-users, enterprises that use the cloud as a platform, and cloud providers themselves. Cloud computing is emerging as one of the major enablers for the manufacturing industry; it can transform the traditional manufacturing business model, help it to align product innovation with business strategy, and create intelligent factory networks that encourage effective collaboration. Two types of cloud computing adoptions in the manufacturing sector have been suggested, manufacturing with direct adoption of cloud computing technologies and cloud manufacturing—the manufacturing version of cloud computing. Cloud computing has been in some of key areas of manufacturing such as IT, pay-as-you-go business models, production scaling up and down per demand, and flexibility in deploying and customizing solutions. In cloud manufacturing, distributed resources are encapsulated into cloud services and managed in a centralized way. Clients can use cloud services according to their requirements. Cloud users can request services ranging from product design, manufacturing, testing, management, and all other stages of a product life cycle.     

云计算资源调度研究综述

资源调度是云计算的一个主要研究方向.首先对云计算资源调度的相关研究现状进行深入调查和分析;然后重点讨论以降低云计算数据中心能耗为目标的资源调度方法、以提高系统资源利用率为目标的资源管理方法、基于经济学的云资源管理模型,给出最小能耗的云计算资源调度模型和最小服务器数量的云计算资源调度模型,并深入分析和比较现有的云资源调度方法;最后指出云计算资源管理的未来重要研究方向:基于预测的资源调度、能耗与性能折衷的调度、面向不同应用负载的资源管理策略与机制、面向计算能力(CPU、内存)和网络带宽的综合资源分配、多目标优化的资源调度,以便为云计算研究提供有益的参考.