Security challenges for the next generation of highly available systems

Abstract

Nowadays, highly available (HA) systems are a must, for almost any business process. More recently, the need for HA systems have increased as electronic commerce and other internet-based applications have become widely used with the growing Web usage. Security is a major concern for these systems. Companies want to make sure that their security systems are working flawlessly and efficiently. Making sure that these systems are available to allow the right people access to the right areas of the company is imperative. Traditionally, HA systems consist of proprietary hardware and software components. However, the price/performance advantages of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) based clusters have had a compelling affect on HA vendors and their marketplace. The emergence of computational grids makes it feasible to develop cost-effective, large-scale geographically distributed HA systems. Making sure that critical applications on this new generation of HA systems are secured is a challenging proposition. In this article, we have identified a list of challenges for the next generation of grid-based HA systems. We have explored the visualization of security services with their pluggable implementation to address the security needs of these grid-based HA systems. The main advantages of this solution include independence with respect to the underlying security mechanisms; best trade-off between security guarantees and processing capabilities; configurability of security architecture; better portability across heterogeneous platforms; and a smaller application development cycle for the HA functionality in the system.