Publications

Project:Melodic

Authors:Kyriakos Kritikos, Chrysostomos Zeginis, Joaquin Iranzo, Roman Sosa Gonzalez, Daniel Seybold, Frank Griesinger, Jörg Domaschka

Source:https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13677-019-0143-x

Abstract:The Cloud offers enhanced flexibility in the management of resources for any kind of application while it promises the reduction of its cost as well as its infinite scalability. In this way, due to these advantages, there is a recent move towards migrating business processes (BPs) in the Cloud. Such a move is currently performed in a manual manner and only in the context of one Cloud. However, a multi- & cross-Cloud configuration of a BP can be beneficial as it can allow exploiting the best possible offers from multiple Clouds and enable to avoid the lock-in effect by also having the ability to deploy different instances of the BP in different Clouds close to the locations of BP customers. In this respect, this article presents a novel architecture of an environment which realises the vision of multi-Cloud BP provisioning. This environment involves innovative components which support the cross-level orchestration of cloud services as well as the cross-level monitoring and adaptation of BPs. It also relies on a certain language called CAMEL which has been extended to support the adaptive provisioning of multi-Cloud BPs

Project:Melodic

Authors: Geir Horn, Leire Orue-Echevarria Arrieta, Beniamino Di Martino, Paweł Skrzypek, Dimosthenis Kyriazis

Source:https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-33509-0_59

Abstract:Cloud applications are by nature dynamic and must react to variations in use, and evolve to adopt new Cloud services, and exploit new capabilities offered by Edge and Fog devices, or within data centers offering Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) or dedicated processors for Artificial Intelligence (AI). Our proposal is to alleviate this complexity by using patterns at all stages of the Cloud application life-cycle: deployment, automatic service discovery, monitoring, and adaptive application evolution. The main idea of this paper is that it is possible to reduce the complexity of composing, deploying, and evolving Cross-Cloud applications using dynamic patterns.

Project:Melodic

Authors: Sebastian Schork, Feroz Zahid, Dipesh Pradhan, Sébastien Kicin, Antonia Schwichtenberg

Source:https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-20883-7_1

Abstract:Open Source software solutions play a critical role for the SMEs by enabling easy access to reusable software. Also, with the rapid growth in the popularity of the cloud technologies, computational demands of SMEs are cost-efficiently met by the public clouds as users can dynamically acquire resources on demand according to their needs. However, non-standardized cloud interfaces, lack of inter-cloud transparency, and complex cost models, often result in vendor lock-in. Once in vendor lock-in, cloud users have to live with a single cloud provider and accept whatever pricing schemes and SLAs are imposed. Moreover, new regulations covered by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe require companies to enforce policies regarding secure storage of data in the cloud, as well as restrict moving confidential datasets outside Europe. This situation requires a more transparent use of cloud resources from multiple cloud providers, that conform with user’s data privacy needs, service requirements, and budget.

In this paper, we discuss challenges and pitfalls of designing a Cross-Cloud DevOps stack for an app-based extension platform of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. The fully-automated DevOps stack, based on open source software tools and technologies, has been developed in close coordination with an open source integration project, Melodic. With the help of our DevOps stack, third-party apps in our CRM software are now Multi-Cloud ready, and the data storage in the cloud by the users conforms to potential GDPR requirements. In addition, the deployment time of apps has been reduced to minutes, while the platform is able to scale up and scale down apps efficiently based on the current workload requirements, saving substantial cloud costs.

Project:Melodic

Authors:Geir Horn, Paweł Skrzypek

Source:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8418097

Abstract:Cross Cloud deployment of applications allows for many additional benefits, like using the best Cloud provider for a given application component, increasing the reliability owing to the diversification of Cloud providers, and providing additional elasticity and capacity. On the other side, in practical applications, it is currently very difficult to properly plan and optimise the architecture of the application for cross Cloud deployment. Different Cloud providers uses different types of infrastructure, making direct comparisons difficult. Additionally, the requirements of the application could change over time and according to the application’s execution context, workload, users, and many other aspects. This paper presents the fundamentals of the MELODIC solution based on a high level model of the application and dynamic, Cloud provider agnostic optimised deployment and reconfiguration of the application.

Project:Melodic

Authors:Daniel Baur, Daniel Seybold, Frank Griesinger, Hynek Masata, Jörg Domaschka

Source:https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3307518

Abstract: Orchestrating workloads in a multi-cloud environment is a challenging task, as one needs to overcome vendor lock-in and select a matching offer from a large and heterogenous market. Yet, existing cloud management tools rely on provider dependent models and manual selection, making runtime changes to the selection in case of provider failures impossible.
We propose a provider agnostic, workload centric approach to multi-cloud orchestration relying on a constraint language that allows automatic selection and runtime management of cloud resources overcoming e.g. provider failures.

Project:Melodic

Author:Kyriakos Kritikos

Presented:CLOSER 2019 (9th International Conference on Cloud Computing and Service Science)

Abstract:Currently, there is a move towards adopting multi-clouds due to their main benefits, including vendor lock-in avoidance and optimal application realisation via different cloud services. However, such multi-cloud applications face a new challenge related to the dynamicity and uncertainty that even a single cloud environment exhibits. As such, they cannot deliver a suitable service level to their customers, resulting in SLA penalty costs and application provider reputation reduction. To this end, we have previously proposed a cross-level and multi-cloud application adaptation architecture. Towards realising this architecture, this paper proposes two extensions of the CAMEL language allowing to specify advanced adaptation rules and histories. Such extensions not only enable to cover cross-level application adaptation by executing adaptation workflows but also to progress such an adaptation to address both the application and exploited cloud services evolution.

Project:Melodic/Functionizer

Authors:Geir Horn, Paweł Skrzypek, Katarzyna Materka, Tomasz Przeździęk

Source:https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-15035-8_102

Abstract:Cost savings is one of the main motivations for deploying commercial applications in the Cloud. These savings are more pronounced for applications with varying computational needs, like Computational Intelligence (CI) applications. However, continuously deploying, adapting, and decommissioning the provided Cloud resources manually is challenging, and autonomous deployment support is necessary. This paper discusses the specific challenges of CI applications and provide calculations to show that dynamic use of Cloud resources will result in significant cost benefits for CI applications.

Project:Functionizer

Authors:Kyriakos Kritikos, Paweł Skrzypek

Source:https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-20485-3_34

Abstract:Serverless computing is currently taking a momentum due to the main benefits it introduces which include zero administration and reduced operation cost for applications. However, not all application components can be made serverless in sight also of certain limitations with respect to the deployment of such components in corresponding serverless platforms. In this respect, there is currently a great need for managing hybrid applications, i.e., applications comprising both normal and serverless components. Such a need is covered in this paper through extending the Melodic platform in order to support the deployment and adaptive provisioning of hybrid, cross-cloud applications. Apart from analysing the architecture of the extended platform, we also explain what are the relevant challenges for supporting the management of serverless components and how we intend to confront them. One use case is also utilised in order to showcase the main benefits of the proposed platform.

Project:Melodic

Authors:Geir Horn, Marta Różańska

Source:Pending publication

Abstract:Cloud computing promises flexibility, and allows applications to dynamically scale or change configuration in response to demand. Autonomic deployment is the best way to manage such applications, and the deployment decisions should aim to optimize the application owner’s utility. In general this leads to multi-objective deployment decisions over multiple utility dimensions. Such problems are typically managed by forming a scalar utility as a weighted combination of various objective dimensions. However, then the maximum utility is not only depending on the utility dimensions, but also on the weights used in the scalarization. This paper proposes an approach that has the potential to reduce the number of possible deployment configurations to consider, namely the ones with least sensitivity to the weights used in the scalarization and demonstrates this approach for a small industrial application for the bi-criterion case, which is of practical importance as many real Cloud deployments aim to simultaneously minimizing the deployment cost utility dimension and maximizing the application performance utility dimension.

Project:Melodic

Author:Dipesh Pradhan, Feroz Zahid

Source:https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-15035-8_101/

Abstract:Geographically-distributed application deployments are critical for a variety of cloud applications, such as those employed in the Internet-of-Things (IoT), edge computing, and multimedia. However, selecting appropriate cloud data centers for the applications, from a large number available locations, is a difficult task. The users need to consider several different aspects in the data center selection, such as inter-data center network performance, data transfer costs, and the application requirements with respect to the network performance.

This paper proposes a data center clustering mechanism to group befitting cloud data centers together in order to automate data center selection task as governed by the application needs. Employing our clustering mechanism, we present four different types of clustering schemes, with different importance given to available bandwidth, latency, and cloud costs between pair of data centers. The proposed clustering schemes are evaluated using a large number of data centers from two major public clouds, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud Platform. The results, based on a comprehensive empirical evaluation of the quality of obtained clusters, show that the proposed clustering schemes are very effective in optimizing data center selection as per the application requirements.

Project:Melodic

Authors:Somnath Mazumdar, Daniel Seybold, Kyriakos Kritikos, Yiannis Verginadis

Source:https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40537-019-0178-3

Abstract:Currently, the data to be explored and exploited by computing systems increases at an exponential rate. The massive amount of data or so called “Big Data” put pressure on existing technologies for providing scalable, fast and efficient support. Recent applications and the current user support from multi-domain computing, assisted in migrating from data-centric
to knowledge-centric computing. However, it remains a challenge to optimally store and place or migrate such huge data sets across data centers (DCs). In particular, due to the frequent change of application and DC behaviour (i.e., resources or latencies), data access or usage patterns need to be analyzed as well. Primarily, the main objective is to find a better data storage location that improves the overall data placement cost as well as the application performance (such as throughput). In this survey paper, we are providing a state of the art overview of Cloud-centric Big Data placement together with the data storage methodologies. It is an attempt to highlight the actual correlation between these two in terms of better supporting Big Data management.Our focus is on management aspects which are seen under the prism of nonfunctional properties. In the end, the readers can appreciate the deep analysis of respective technologies related to the management of Big Data and be guided towards their selection in the context of satisfying their non-functional application requirements. Furthermore, challenges are supplied highlighting the current gaps in Big Data management marking down the way it needs to evolve in the near future.

Project:Melodic

Author:Amir Taherkordi, Feroz Zahid, Yiannis Verginadis, Geir Horn

Source:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8543679

Abstract:Cloud computing has been recognized as the de facto utility computing standard for hosting and delivering services over the Internet. Cloud platforms are being rapidly adopted by business owners and end-users thanks to its many benefits to traditional computing models such as cost saving, scalability, unlimited storage, anytime anywhere access, better security, and high fault-tolerance capability. However, despite the fact that clouds offer huge opportunities and services to the industry, the landscape of cloud computing research is evolving for several reasons, such as emerging data-intensive applications, multicloud deployment models, and more strict non-functional requirements on cloud-based services. In this paper, we develop a comprehensive taxonomy of main cloud computing research areas, discuss state-of-the-art approaches for each area and the associated sub-areas, and highlight the challenges and future directions per research area. The survey framework, presented in this paper, provides useful insights and outlook for the cloud computing research and development, allows broader understanding of the design challenges of cloud computing, and sheds light on the future of this fast-growing utility computing paradigm.

Project:Melodic

Author:Daniel Seybold, Jörg Domaschka

Source:https://icpe2019.spec.org/

Abstract:Big Data and IoT applications require highly-scalable database management system (DBMS), preferably operated in the cloud to ensure scalability also on the resource level. As the number of existing distributed DBMS is extensive, the selection and operation of a distributed DBMS in the cloud is a challenging task. While DBMS benchmarking is a supportive approach, existing frameworks do not cope with the runtime constraints of distributed DBMS and the volatility of cloud environments. Hence, DBMS evaluation frameworks need to consider DBMS runtime and cloud resource constraints to enable portable and reproducible results. In this paper we present Mowgli, a novel evaluation framework that enables the evaluation of non-functional DBMS features in correlation with DBMS runtime and cloud resource constraints. Mowgli fully automates the
execution of cloud and DBMS agnostic evaluation scenarios, including DBMS cluster adaptations. The evaluation of Mowgli is based on two IoT-driven scenarios, comprising the DBMSs Apache Cassandra and Couchbase, nine DBMS runtime configurations, two cloud providers with two different storage backends. Mowgli automates the execution of the resulting 102 evaluation scenarios, verifying its support for portable and reproducible DBMS evaluations. The results provide extensive insights into the DBMS scalability and the impact of different cloud resources. The significance of the results is validated by the correlation with existing DBMS evaluation results.

Project:Melodic

Authors:Daniel Baur, Frank Griesinger, Yiannis Verginadis, Vasilis Stefanidis, Ioannis Patiniotakis

Source:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8603150

Abstract:Cloud computing and its computing as an utility paradigm offers on-demand resources, enabling its users to seamlessly adapt applications to the current demand. With its (virtually) unlimited elasticity, managing deployed applications becomes more and more complex raising the need for automation. Such autonomous systems leverage the importance to constantly monitor and analyse the deployed workload and the underlying infrastructure serving as knowledge-base for deriving corrective actions like scaling. Existing monitoring solutions, however are not designed to cope with a frequently changing topology. We propose a monitoring and event processing framework following a model-driven approach, that allows users to express i) the monitoring demand by directly referencing entities of the deployment context, ii) aggregate the monitoring data using mathematical expressions, iii) trigger and process events based on the monitoring data and finally iv) attach scalability rule to those events. We accompany the modelling language with a monitoring orchestration and distributed complex event processing framework, capable of enacting the model in a frequently changing multi-cloud infrastructure, considering cloud-specific aspects like communication costs.

Project:Melodic

Authors:Kyriakos Kritikos, Geir Horn

Source:https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-99819-0_13

Abstract:Cloud computing is a paradigm that has revolutionized the way service-based applications are developed and provisioned due to the main benefits that it introduces, including more flexible pricing and resource management. The most widely used kind of cloud service is the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) one. In this service kind, an infrastructure in the form of a VM is offered over which users can create the suitable environment for provisioning their application components. By following the micro-service paradigm, not just one but multiple cloud services are required to provision an application. This leads to requiring to solve an optimisation problem for selecting the right IaaS services according to the user requirements. The current techniques employed to solve this problem are either exhaustive, so not scalable, or adopt heuristics, sacrificing optimality with a reduced solving time. In this respect, this paper proposes a novel technique which involves the modelling of an optimisation problem in a different form than the most common one. In particular, this form enables the use of exhaustive techniques, like constraint programming (CP), such that both an optimal solution is delivered in a much more scalable manner. The main benefits of this technique are highlighted through conducting an experimental evaluation against a classical CP-based exhaustive approach.

Project:Melodic

Authors:Daniel Seybold, Christopher B. Hauser, Georg Eisenhart, Simon Volpert, Jörg Domaschka

Source:https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-10549-5_8

Abstract:Containers emerged as cloud resource offerings. While the advantages of containers, such as easing the application deployment, orchestration and adaptation, work well for stateless applications, the feasibility of containerization of stateful applications, such as database management system (DBMS), still remains unclear due to potential performance overhead. The myriad of container operation models and storage backends even raises the complexity of operating a containerized DBMS. Here, we present an extensible evaluation methodology to identify performance overhead of a containerized DBMS by combining three operational models and two storage backends. For each combination a memory-bound and disk-bound workload is applied. The results show a clear performance overhead for containerized DBMS on top of virtual machines (VMs) compared to physical resources. Further, a containerized DBMS on top of VMs with different storage backends results in a tolerable performance overhead. Building upon these baseline results, we derive a set of open evaluation challenges for containerized DBMSs.

Project:Melodic

Authors:Feroz Zahid, Amir Taherkordi, Ernst Gunnar Gran, Tor Skeie, Bjørn Dag Johnsen

Source: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8385210

Abstract: Clouds offer flexible and economically attractive compute and storage solutions for enterprises. However, the effectiveness of cloud computing for high-performance computing (HPC) systems still remains questionable. When clouds are deployed on lossless interconnection networks, like InfiniBand (IB), challenges related to load-balancing, low-overhead virtualization, and performance isolation hinder full potential utilization of the underlying interconnect. Moreover, cloud data centers incorporate a highly dynamic environment rendering static network reconfigurations, typically used in IB systems, infeasible. In this paper, we present a framework for a self-adaptive network architecture for HPC clouds based on lossless interconnection networks, demonstrated by means of our implemented IB prototype. Our solution, based on a feedback control and optimization loop, enables the lossless HPC network to dynamically adapt to the varying traffic patterns, current resource availability, workload distributions, and also in accordance with the service provider-defined policies. Furthermore, we present IBAdapt, a simplified ruled-based language for the service providers to specify adaptation strategies used by the framework. Our developed self-adaptive IB network prototype is demonstrated using state-of-the-art industry software. The results obtained on a test cluster demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the framework when it comes to improving Quality-of-Service compliance in HPC clouds.

Project:Melodic

Authors:Mark Leznik, Simon Volpert, Frank Griesinger, Daniel Seybold, Jörg Domaschka

Source:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8436348

Abstract:With the rapid rise of the cloud computing paradigm, the manual maintenance and provisioning of the technological layers behind it, both in their hardware and virtualized form, became cumbersome and error-prone. This has opened up the need for automated capacity planning strategies in heterogeneous cloud computing environments. However, even with mechanisms to fully accommodate customers and fulfill service-level agreements, providers often tend to over-provision their hardware and virtual resources. A proliferation of unused capacity leads to higher energy costs, and correspondingly, the price for cloud technology services. Capacity planning algorithms rely on data collected from the utilized resources. Yet, the amount of data aggregated through the monitoring of hardware and virtual instances does not allow for a manual supervision, much less data analysis or a correlation and anomaly detection. Current data science advancements enable the assistance of efficient automation, scheduling and provisioning of cloud computing resources based on supervised and unsupervised machine learning techniques. In this work, we present the current state of the art in monitoring, storage, analysis and adaptation approaches for the data produced by cloud computing environments, to enable proactive, dynamic resource provisioning.

Project:Melodic

Author:Kyriakos Kritikos

Source:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8456130

Abstract:Nowadays, data are being produced at a very fast pace. This leads to the generation of big data that need to be properly managed, especially due to the increased complexity that their size introduces. Such data are usually subject to further processing to obtain added-value knowledge out of them. Current systems seem to focus more on how to more optimally perform this processing while they neglect that data placement can have a tremendous effect on the processing performance. In this respect, big data placement algorithms have been already proposed. However, most of them are either suggested in isolation to the big data processing system or are not dynamic to deal with required big data placement changes at runtime. As such, this paper proposes a novel, dynamic big data placement algorithm which can more optimally find the best placement solution by considering multiple optimisation objectives and solving in a more precise manner the big data placement problem with respect to the state-of-the-art. Further, a novel suggestion for optimally combining such an algorithm with a big data application management system is proposed so as to have the ability to address in conjunction both big data placement, processing and resource management issues. Respective experimental evaluation results showcase the efficiency of our algorithm in producing optimal big data placement solutions

Project:Melodic

Author:Yiannis Verginadis, Vasilis Stefanidis, Ioanis Patiniotakis, Gregoris Mentzas

Source:https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-99819-0_8
Abstract:The last few years, the generation of vast amounts of heterogeneous data with different velocity and veracity and the requirement to process them, has significantly challenged the computational capacity and efficiency of the modern infrastructural resources. The propagation of Big Data among different processing and storage architectures, has amplified the need for adequate and cost-efficient infrastructures to host them. An overabundance of cloud service offerings is currently available and is being rapidly adopted by small and medium enterprises based on its many benefits to traditional computing models. However, at the same time the Big Data computing requirements pose new research challenges that question the adoption of single cloud provider resources. Nowadays, we discuss the emerging data-intensive applications that necessitate the wide adoption of multicloud deployment models, in order to use all the advantages of cloud computing. A key tool for managing such multicloud applications and guarantying their quality of service, even in extreme scenarios of workload fluctuations, are adequate distributed monitoring mechanisms. In this work, we discuss a distributed complex event processing architecture that follows automatically the big data application deployment in order to efficiently monitor its health status and detect reconfiguration opportunities. This proposal is examined against an illustrative scenario and is preliminary evaluated for revealing its performance results.

Project:Melodic

Authors:Yiannis Verginadis, Ioannis Patiniotakis, Gregoris Mentzas

Source:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8466270

Abstract:Cloud computing has been recognized as the most prominent way for hosting and delivering services over the Internet. A plethora of cloud service offerings are currently available and are being rapidly adopted by small and medium enterprises but also by larger organisations based on their many superiorities to traditional computing models. However, at the same time the computing requirements of the modern cloud application has been exponentially increased due to the available big data for processing. Nowadays, we discuss the emerging data-intensive applications that necessitate the wide adoption of multi-cloud deployment models, in order to use all the advantages of cloud computing without any restrictions with respect to who is providing infrastructural services. In this paper, we discuss a Metadata Schema for data-aware multi-cloud computing which aspires to form the appropriate background vocabulary that will aid the big data-aware application deployment for distributed and loosely-coupled multi-cloud applications.

Project:Melodic

Author:Daniel Seybold

Source:https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3152693

Abstract:The selection and operation of a distributed database management system (DDBMS) in the cloud is a challenging task as supportive evaluation frameworks miss orchestrated evaluation scenarios, hindering comparable and reproducible evaluations for heterogeneous cloud resources. We propose a novel evaluation approach that supports orchestrated evaluation scenarios for scalability, elasticity and availability by exploiting cloud resources. We highlight the challenges in evaluating DDBMSs in the cloud and introduce a cloud-centric framework for orchestrated DDBMS evaluation, enabling reproducible evaluations and significant rating indices.

Project:Melodic

Authors:Daniel Seybold, Jörg Domaschka

Source: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-67162-8_12

Abstract:The database landscape has significantly evolved over the last decade as cloud computing enables to run distributed databases on virtually unlimited cloud resources. Hence, the already non-trivial task of selecting and deploying a distributed database system becomes more challenging. Database evaluation frameworks aim at easing this task by guiding the database selection and deployment decision. The evaluation of databases has evolved as well by moving the evaluation focus from performance to distribution aspects such as scalability and elasticity. This paper presents a cloud-centric analysis of distributed database evaluation frameworks based on evaluation tiers and framework requirements. It analysis eight well adopted evaluation frameworks. The results point out that the evaluation tiers performance, scalability, elasticity and consistency are well supported, in contrast to resource selection and availability. Further, the analysed frameworks do not support cloud-centric requirements but support classic evaluation requirements.

Project:Melodic

Authors:Geir Horn, Paweł Skrzypek, Marcin Prusinski, Katarzyna Materka, Vassilis Stefanidis, Yiannis Verginadis,

To be presented: http://tools2019.innopolis.ru/

Abstract:MELODIC is and open source platform for autonomic deployment and optimized management of Cross-Cloud applications. The MELODIC platform is a complete, enterprise ready solution using only open source software. The contribution of this paper is the discussion of approaches to integration and various options for large scale open source projects and their evaluation showing that only a combination of an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) with Business Process Management (BPM) for platform integration and control, and the use of a distributed Event Management Services (EMS) for monitoring state and creating context awareness, will provide the required stability and reliability. Consequently, the selection, the evaluation, and the design process of these three crucial components of the MELODIC platform are described.

Project:Functionizer

Authors:Kyriakos Kritikos, Paweł Skrzypek

Source:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8605774

Abstract:Serverless computing is a new computing paradigm that promises to revolutionize the way applications are built and provisioned. In this computing kind, small pieces of software called functions are deployed in the cloud with zero administration and minimal costs for the software developer. Further, this computing kind has various applications in areas like image processing and scientific computing. Due to the above advantages, the current uptake of serverless computing is being addressed by traditional big cloud providers like Amazon, who offer serverless platforms for serverless application deployment and provisioning. However, as in the case of cloud computing, such providers attempt to lock-in their customers with the supply of complementary services which provide added-value support to serverless applications. To this end, to resolve this issue, serverless frameworks have been recently developed. Such frameworks either abstract away from serverless platform specificities, or they enable the production of a mini serverless platform on top of existing clouds. However, these frameworks differ in various features that do have an impact on the serverless application lifecycle. To this end, to assist the developers in selecting the most suitable framework, this paper attempts to review these frameworks according to a certain set of criteria that directly map to the application lifecycle. Further, based on the review results, some remaining challenges are supplied, which when confronted will make serverless frameworks highly usable and suitable for the handling of both serverless as well as mixed application kinds.

Project:Functionizer

Authors:Kyriakos Kritikos, Pawel Skrzypek, Oliviu Matei and Alexandru Moga

Source:https://conferences.computer.org/cloud/2019/

Abstract:Geographically-distributed application deployments are critical for a variety of cloud applications, such as those employed in the Internet-of-Things (IoT), edge computing, and multimedia. However, selecting appropriate cloud data centers for the applications, from a large number available locations, is a difficult task. The users need to consider several different aspects in the data center selection, such as inter-data center network performance, data transfer costs, and the application requirements with respect to the network performance.

This paper proposes a data center clustering mechanism to group befitting cloud data centers together in order to automate data center selection task as governed by the application needs. Employing our clustering mechanism, we present four different types of clustering schemes, with different importance given to available bandwidth, latency, and cloud costs between pair of data centers. The proposed clustering schemes are evaluated using a large number of data centers from two major public clouds, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud Platform. The results, based on a comprehensive empirical evaluation of the quality of obtained clusters, show that the proposed clustering schemes are very effective in optimizing data center selection as per the application requirements.

Project:Functionizer

Authors:Kyriakos Kritikos, Paweł Skrzypek

Source:https://conferences.computer.org/services/2019/workshops/sc_workshop.html

Abstract:Cost savings is one of the main motivations for deploying commercial applications in the Cloud. These savings are more pronounced for applications with varying computational needs, like Computational Intelligence (CI) applications. However, continuously deploying, adapting, and decommissioning the provided Cloud resources manually is challenging, and autonomous deployment support is necessary. This paper discusses the specific challenges of CI applications and provide calculations to show that dynamic use of Cloud resources will result in significant cost benefits for CI applications.