Interconnected Cloud Research Articles

Transforming Network Management: Intent-Based Flexible Control Empowered by Efficient Flow-Centric Visibility

The Internet architecture has recently shifted towards a framework characterized by multiple interconnected cloud sites, all linked via an L3 IP network. With this shift, managing networking controls among multiple cloud sites is becoming a significant operational challenge. In particular, ensuring effective networking control necessitates a deeper understanding of flow-level dynamics for comprehensively monitoring interconnection statuses across multiple sites. In this paper, we first propose an IO Visor-enabled tracing solution for Linux-based boxes to efficiently enable the comprehensive collection of network packet flows across interconnected sites. Next, we apply IP prefix-based flow-level analysis at a centralized location to support the intent-based networking control application. This flow-level analysis involves generating policy-based specific action (i.e., redirect) via SDN controllers for specific source IP prefixes, which are causing unknown or potentially vulnerable flows. Furthermore, we employ an open-source ONOS SDN controller to tackle the challenge of managing the hybrid SDN-IP interconnections. By leveraging intent-based networking control, we effectively apply ONOS intents based on IP routing information and generated a set of forwarding action. We evaluate our proposed solution in an experimental SDN-cloud testbed, demonstrating its effectiveness in real-world scenarios. Overall, through the seamless integration of these monitoring and control approaches, we manage to enhance the adaptability and security of the interconnected cloud sites of the testbed.

Securing the Skies: Cybersecurity Strategies for Smart City Cloud using Various Algorithams

As smart cities continue to evolve, their reliance on cloud computing technologies becomes increasingly apparent, enabling the seamless integration of data-driven services and urban functionalities. However, this transformation also raises concerns about the security of the vast and interconnected cloud infrastructures that underpin these cities' operations. This paper explores the critical intersection of cloud computing and cybersecurity within the context of smart cities.
 This research is dealing with challenges posed by the rapid expansion of smart city initiatives and their reliance on cloud-based solutions. It investigates the vulnerabilities that emerge from this technological convergence, emphasizing the potential risks to data privacy, urban services, and citizen well-being. The abstract presents a comprehensive overview of the evolving threat landscape that smart cities face in the realm of cloud computing.
 To address these challenges, the abstract highlights the importance of proactive cybersecurity strategies tailored specifically to the unique needs of smart cities. It underscores the significance of adopting a multi-layered approach that encompasses robust encryption protocols, intrusion detection systems, threat intelligence sharing, and collaborative efforts among stakeholders. Drawing insights from existing research and real-world case studies, the abstract showcases innovative solutions that leverage advanced technologies like artificial intelligence and blockchain to fortify the security posture of smart city cloud infrastructures. It explores the role of data governance, user authentication, and anomaly detection in creating a resilient cybersecurity framework that safeguards critical urban systems.

Review on data replication strategies in single vs. interconnected cloud systems: Focus on data correlation‐aware strategies

SummaryData replication is a well‐known technique in cloud systems for enhancing availability and performance. Various strategies and surveys have been proposed in this respect. These surveys include comprehensive analysis and classifications. However, to the best of the authors' knowledge, there is no survey concentrating on strategies designed for interconnected cloud systems. In this article, we provide an in‐depth analysis of existing data replication strategies in cloud systems, covering single and interconnected clouds. We also highlight data correlation‐aware strategies as well as their key steps. Furthermore, we examine the major strategies' features such as: () addressed replication issues, () orientation towards the provider and the consumer, () consideration of the service level agreement, () consideration of cost and economic aspects, and () evaluation tools. Finally, we provide a performance analysis through extensive simulations of several replication strategies dedicated for single and interconnected clouds.

The Development of an IoT-based Indoor Air Monitoring System Towards Smart Energy Efficient Classroom

Indoor air quality has become a crucial issue, specifically during COVID 19 pandemic. The good indoor air quality will lead to occupants’ comfort condition, thus affecting their productivity. Indoor air temperature and relative humidity are two essential components of thermal comfort. This paper presents the development of a temperature and relative humidity monitoring system for the classroom using the Internet of Things (IoT). This system consists of three main components: logger nodes, a gateway logger, and an interconnected cloud server. The logger node (ESP8266 / ESP32 microcontroller and DHT22 sensor) is a device at the edge of the IoT system and is placed at the monitoring location. The logger gateway is built on a Raspberry Pi 4, which serves as an intermediate server. It receives periodic data (temperature and humidity) from the logger nodes through the publish-subscribe MQTT protocol and sends it to the MongoDB Atlas cloud database. The logger gateway saves all received logs into the SQLite database as temporary local storage and then uploads the data to the MongoDB Atlas cloud at a predefined interval. The MongoDB data is then displayed on a monitoring dashboard using MongoDB charts. The logger node with the DHT22 sensor has been adjusted using a linear model and successfully tested to monitor indoor and outdoor air conditions with satisfactory results. The recorded data has also been successfully modeled using the Gaussian Mixture Model and a simple Fuzzy model. These models can capture the dynamic of air condition in the room and predict the state of the cooling system.

Monitoring and resource management taxonomy in interconnected cloud infrastructures: a survey

Cloud users have recently expanded dramatically. The cloud service providers (CSPs) have also increased and have therefore made their infrastructure more complex. The complex infrastructure needs to be distributed appropriately to various users. Also, the advances in cloud computing have led to the development of interconnected cloud computing environments (ICCEs). For instance, ICCEs include the cloud hybrid, intercloud, multi-cloud, and federated clouds. However, the sharing of resources is not facilitated by specific proprietary technologies and access interfaces used by CSPs. Several CSPs provide similar services but have different access patterns. Data from various CSPs must be obtained and processed by cloud users. To ensure that all ICCE tenants (users and CSPs) benefit from the best CSPs, efficient resource management was suggested. Besides, it is pertinent that cloud resources be monitored regularly. Cloud monitoring is a service that works as a third-party entity between customers and CSPs. This paper discusses a complete cloud monitoring survey in ICCE, focusing on cloud monitoring and its significance. Several current open-source monitoring solutions are discussed. A taxonomy is presented and analyzed for cloud resource management. This taxonomy includes resource pricing, assignment of resources, exploration of resources, collection of resources, and disaster management.

An automated resource management framework for minimizing SLA violations and negotiation in collaborative cloud

Collaborative Cloud computing is an emergent and encouraging computational prototype for sharing on-demand cloud resources in a multi-cloud environment. In a collaborative cloud environment, we make use of unused computational resources within an interconnected network to provide seamless service to the customers. SLA (Service Level Agreement) means a legal agreement signed among the consumer and the cloud service provider to guarantee a better quality of service. Nowadays due to more user request, suppliers of cloud service are not able to deliver guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS) to the customers leading to SLA violation. Existing SLA- based resource allocation models in today's cloud market consider an agreement for each QoS parameters independently and follow fixed pricing models, which results in lacking an end-to-end approach for the client task that requires composing multiple services and inefficient utilization of computing resources, which has direct negative effect on performance and cost. In this paper, we have designed a framework model for the effective dynamic provision of resources considering various categories of SLAs laterally with their penalty. We used Hybrid Cuckoo Search algorithm for scheduling of user requests in collaborative cloud computing environment. The proposed framework services the customer requests from its interconnected cloud servers and has an SLA Negotiation policy to minimize the penalty cost and maximize customer satisfaction by reducing SLA violations.

Characterizing the architectures and brokering protocols for enabling clouds interconnection

SummaryInterconnecting the computing services of different tiers by multiple cloud providers is indispensable to overcome the exponentially increasing demands of enterprises. In view of highly dynamic and unpredictable environment, cloud providers have to face numerous challenges related to service provisioning of diversified applications while handling the critical management operations on resource layers. Proper configuration and uniform development of architectural components and protocols to setup interconnected clouds are inevitable, which play effective role in management. Various approaches have been proposed by research community to interconnect the geographically dispersed clouds to extend the capabilities of standalone provider. Fundamentally, this study encompasses the requirement factors and classification of interconnected cloud management from various aspects. Mainstream resource management elements, architectural components, and brokering protocols with respect to functional impact, which proposed in literature, have been discussed. These protocols and components play pivotal role for aggregating computing services from distinct providers and maintaining the quality of service parameters of service provisioning. Finally, the analysis of various projects is also presented to highlight the functionality of collaborated ecosystem with issues and further directions.

A survey on the service interoperability in cloud computing: Client‐centric and provider‐centric perspectives

SummaryThe vendor lock‐in is a prominent issue in cloud computing. It is caused by cloud providers who offer proprietary services, which hinders the cloud interoperability. Client‐centric interoperability enables the migration of the data and applications across clouds; it gives the clients control over their workloads and a wider range of service choices. Whereas, provider‐centric interoperability allows the providers to collaborate. Thus, providers, who have spare resources, can lend them to other providers who lack computational or storage capabilities to overcome the limitations of their local resources. In this article, we conduct a survey to differentiate between client‐ and provider‐centric interoperability solutions. We aim to provide an up‐to‐date analysis of the current tendencies and the neglected areas of the cloud interoperability field. Thus, we study the cloud service interoperability evolution through the years. Furthermore, we propose definitions for the intra‐cloud and inter‐cloud interoperability. Moreover, we propose a taxonomy to classify the cloud interoperability approaches into client‐centric and provider‐centric categories. Then, for each category, we classify the approaches based on their interoperability environment into single cloud or interconnected clouds. Finally, we analyze and compare the approaches based on multiple criteria. The study reveals the focus on the client‐centric solutions and the interoperability in interconnected clouds. We notice more interest in the data and application levels interoperability, mainly, in infrastructure as a service model. We also find that client‐centric solutions are, mostly, semantic technologies and brokers. However, provider‐centric solutions are middleware, protocols, and standards. We conclude that a generic cloud service interoperability model is needed.

Distributed Meta-Brokering P2P Overlay for Scheduling in Cloud Federation

The interconnected cloud (Intercloud) federation is an emerging paradigm that revolutionizes the scalable service provision of geographically distributed resources. Large-scale distributed resources require well-coordinated and automated frameworks to facilitate service provision in a seamless and systematic manner. Unquestionably, standalone service providers must communicate and federate their cloud sites with other vendors to enable the infinite pooling of resources. The pooling of these resources provides uninterpretable services to increasingly growing cloud users more efficiently, and ensures an improved Service Level Agreement (SLA). However, the research of Intercloud resource management is in its infancy. Therefore, standard interfaces, protocols, and uniform architectural components need to be developed for seamless interaction among federated clouds. In this study, we propose a distributed meta-brokering-enabled scheduling framework for provision of user application services in the federated cloud environment. Modularized architecture of the proposed system with uniform configuration in participating resource sites orchestrate the critical operations of resource management effectively, and form the federation schema. Overlaid meta-brokering instances are implemented on the top of local resource brokers to keep the global functionality isolated. These instances in overlay topology communicate in a P2P manner to maintain decentralization, high scalability, and load manageability. The proposed framework has been implemented and evaluated by extending the Java-based CloudSim 3.0.3 simulation application programming interfaces (APIs). The presented results validate the proposed model and its efficiency to facilitate user application execution with the desired QoS parameters.

Development of Digital Forensic Framework for Joint Heterogeneous Cloud Computing Platforms

The cloud computing is nowadays an embarrassing computing technology by many organisations, academic institutions and business centres. Cloud Service Providers (CSP)s are limited to some resources, lacking some resources requested by its customers, this gives rise to the needs for interconnecting multiple clouds to interoperate and share resources. The interconnected clouds can be in different features and schemes, and the system can be prone to insecurity or intrusion. In this paper, we developed a Digital Forensics framework that can detect an intrusion within heterogeneous joint clouds. We also developed architecture and algorithm that can handle the joint clouds heterogeneity and complexity during inter-clouds resources management.

A lightweight trust management algorithm based on subjective logic for interconnected cloud computing environments

The interconnected cloud computing paradigm is gaining considerable attention as a fundamental emerging model of cloud computing. It allows a wide range of interactions and collaborations across multiple service providers. Despite the potential advantages of interconnected clouds, establishing trust among participating parties is a challenging issue. In this paper, we introduce a lightweight trust management algorithm based on subjective logic (InterTrust) to promote trust in interconnected clouds. The experimental results demonstrate that InterTrust is capable of producing accurate trust information with significantly low execution time and high scalability compared to application of both the well-established trust management algorithm trust network analysis with subjective logic and no trust algorithm.

Brokering in interconnected cloud computing environments: A survey

Cloud computing provides computing platforms and facilitates to optimize utilization of infrastructure resources, reduces deployment time and increases flexibility. The popularity of cloud computing led to development of interconnected cloud computing environments (ICCE) such as hybrid cloud, inter-cloud, multi-cloud, and federated cloud, enabling the possibilities to share resources among individual clouds. However, individual proprietary technologies and access interfaces employed by cloud service providers made it difficult to share resources. Interoperability and portability are two of the major challenges to be addressed to ensure seamless access and sharing of resources and services.Many cloud service providers have similar service offerings but different access patterns. It is difficult and time consuming for a cloud user to select an appropriate cloud service as per the application’s requirement. Cloud user has to gather information from various cloud service providers and analyze them. Cloud broker has been proposed to address the challenge of cloud users to get best out of cloud provider. Cloud broker is an entity which works as an independent third party between cloud users and cloud providers. Cloud broker negotiates with several cloud providers as per user’s requirements and tries to select the best services. Cloud broker coordinates the sharing of resources and provides interoperability and portability with other cloud providers.In this paper, a comprehensive survey of cloud brokering in interconnected cloud computing environments has been provided. The need and importance of cloud broker has been discussed. The existing architectures and frameworks of Cloud Brokering are reviewed. A comprehensive literature survey of various Cloud Brokering techniques is presented. A taxonomy of Cloud Brokering techniques has been presented and analyzed on the basis of their strengths and weaknesses/limitations. The taxonomy includes pricing, multi-criteria, quality of services, optimization and trust techniques. The techniques are analyzed on various performance metrics. Research challenges and open problems are identified from reviewed techniques. A model for cloud broker is proposed to address identified challenges. We hope that our work will enable researchers to launch and dive deep into Cloud Brokering challenges in interconnected cloud computing environments.

VM instance selection for deadline constraint job on agent-based interconnected cloud

In recent years, users have been buying computing resources, such as VM instances, from the cloud resource providers. However, every cloud has its pricing models, solutions, and interfaces. Without a united interface, it is hard to manage across different clouds. To make things worse, it is even hard to select proper VM instances among multiple cloud resource providers when the resources are not sufficient. This paper proposes an interconnected cloud of selecting VM instances based on the job’s deadline constraint. To make the system function, five agents are created for different purposes: a System Monitoring Agent, a Job Dispatching Agent, an Instance Group Managing Agent, an Instance Group Administrating Agent, and a Job Executing Agent. This paper also presents two decision algorithms, the Job Dispatching Algorithm and the Instance Group Invocation Algorithm, based on the Rough Set Theory, the jobs’ deadline constraint, and the computing resource of the VM instances. The proposed system was deployed and evaluated on the real machines. The result shows not only the VM instances on different machines are interconnected, but also the algorithms successfully help manage the interconnected cloud’s computing resources according to the submitted jobs with deadline constraints.

Interoperability and Portability Approaches in Inter-Connected Clouds

Inter-connected cloud computing is an inherent evolution of Cloud Computing. Numerous benefits provided by connecting clouds have garnered attraction from the academic as well as the industry sector. Just as every new evolution faces challenges, inter-connected clouds have their own set of challenges such as security, monitoring, authorization and identity management, vendor lock-in, and so forth. This article considers the vendor lock-in problem, which is a direct consequence of the lack of interoperability and portability. An extensive literature review by surveying more than 120 papers has been done to analyze and categorize various solutions suggested in literature for solving the interoperability and portability issues of inter-connected clouds. After categorizing the solutions, the literature has been mapped to a specific solution and a comparative analysis of the papers under the same solution has been done. The term “inter-connected clouds” has been used generically in this article to refer to any collaboration of clouds which may be from the user side (Multi-clouds or Aggregated service by Broker) or the provider side (Federated clouds or Hybrid clouds). Lastly, two closely related issues (Brokers and Meta-scheduling) and the remaining challenges of inter-connected clouds are discussed.

Multifaceted trust management framework based on a trust level agreement in a collaborative cloud

Cloud computing is an emerging field aimed at providing any type of service on demand -anywhere, and anytime. Advances in this field have facilitated a futuristic collaborative cloud in which many inter-connected clouds provide scalable services. A request processed by an untrustworthy provider can endanger quality of service, prompting the dissatisfaction of the customer. This paper aims to select the Trustworthy Service Provider (TSP) by evaluating trust based on in-context feedback from different sources; these sources include customer feedback, global advisory feedback and third-party feedback. Furthermore, unfair feedback is filtered to improve accuracy. Consequently, the job-success rate increases, and customers are able to obtain value-for-money for the sum paid toward selection of a provider. The present experimental work proves that the proposed model is effective and efficient in selecting a trustworthy provider in a collaborative environment.

Toward a holistic federated future internet experimentation environment: the experience of NOVI research and experimentation

This article presents the design and pilot implementation of a suite of intelligent methods, algorithms, and tools for federating heterogeneous experimental platforms (domains) toward a holistic Future Internet experimentation ecosystem. The proposed framework developed within the NOVI research and experimentation European collaborative effort, aims at providing a modular data, control, and management plane architecture that includes: an information model capturing the abstractions of virtualized resources residing in different yet interworking experimental platforms; resource mapping algorithms tackling the inter-domain virtual network embedding problem; mechanisms providing interoperability of monitoring tools; policy-based management services for role-based intra and inter-domain management policies; and dataplane stitching mechanisms to enable the composition of user-specific slices (baskets of virtual resources drawn from the federated substrate). The NOVI framework was deployed and validated in a combined testbed consisting of two dissimilar platforms: a private PlanetLab domain with resources interconnected over the public Internet; and FEDERICA, an infrastructure of virtual resources interconnected via dedicated networking facilities of European National Research and Education Networks and GEANT. This pre-normative work is expected to contribute to bridging Future Internet experimental federations with interconnected cloud architectures and interworked public/private data-centers, adding value via its intelligent services, information models, and composite algorithms.

A meta-heuristic optimization approach to the scheduling of bag-of-tasks applications on heterogeneous clouds with multi-level arrivals and critical jobs

As cloud computing evolves, it is becoming more and more apparent that the future of this industry lies in interconnected cloud systems where resources will be provided by multiple “Cloud” providers instead of just one. In this way, the hosts of services that are cloud-based will have access to even larger resource pools while at the same time increasing their scalability and availability by diversifying both their computing resources and the geographical locations where those resources operate from. Furthermore the increased competition between the cloud providers in conjunction with the commoditization of hardware has already led to large decreases in the cost of cloud computing and this trend is bound to continue in the future. Scientific focus in cloud computing is also headed this way with more studies on the efficient allocation of resources and effective distribution of computing tasks between those resources. This study evaluates the use of meta-heuristic optimization algorithms in the scheduling of bag-of-tasks applications in a heterogeneous cloud of clouds. The study of both local and globally arriving jobs has been considered along with the introduction of sporadically arriving critical jobs. Simulation results show that the use of these meta-heuristics can provide significant benefits in costs and performance.

Enterprise Interoperability for Global Collaborative Networks through Cloud Knowledge-Oriented Collaboration System

New opportunities for global enterprise collaboration are leading into an Information and Communications Technology (ICT) era of network ubiquity through the development of new cooperative cyber-processes, which will provide the ability to deliver real-time integration capabilities. This move is supported by interconnected clouds computing with the idea of extending interoperable software and hardware environments from a physical to a virtual infrastructure. Whilst the Internet and cloud technology are indispensable for the operation and collaboration of modern enterprises, they remain nevertheless, at the level of cloud-enabled databases and IT software integration. They fall far short of the knowledge that is relevant for collaborative creation and operation. This paper aims to introduce and develop the concept of a Cloud Knowledge-Oriented Collaboration Systems (cKOCS), which combines cloud computing, the knowledge community, self-learning knowledge and rule-based moderator technology for global collaborative networks. The cloud knowledgeoriented collaboration system must facilitate the effective and efficient transmission of knowledge with the right expertise and those that enable connections with the right information, enable ad-hoc collaboration, provide a platform to establish real-time notification and awareness in collaborative situations and support collaborative enterprises decision making among participations.

Interconnected Cloud Computing Environments

A brief review of the Internet history reveals the fact that the Internet evolved after the formation of primarily independent networks. Similarly, interconnected clouds, also called Inter-cloud , can be viewed as a natural evolution of cloud computing. Recent studies show the benefits in utilizing multiple clouds and present attempts for the realization of an Inter-cloud or federated cloud environment. However, cloud vendors have not taken into account cloud interoperability issues, and each cloud comes with its own solution and interfaces for services. This survey initially discusses all the relevant aspects motivating cloud interoperability. Furthermore, it categorizes and identifies possible cloud interoperability scenarios and architectures. The spectrum of challenges and obstacles that the Inter-cloud realization is faced with are covered, a taxonomy of them is provided, and fitting enablers that tackle each challenge are identified. All these aspects require a comprehensive review of the state of the art, including ongoing projects and studies in the area. We conclude by discussing future directions and trends toward the holistic approach in this regard.

Architecture and protocol for intercloud communication

A cloud does not have infinite computational and storage resources in its infrastructure. If it saturates, it will not be able to satisfy new requests for service allocations sent by its customers. Clouds should interrelate through networking protocols in order to provide scalability, efficiency and flexibility by using the services and the computational and storage resources of the infrastructures of other clouds. In this paper we describe an architecture and protocol that allows exchanging information, data, services, computing and storage resources between all interconnected clouds. It is highly scalable and permits to add new clouds easily, while tries to balance the load of the nodes involved in the intercloud communication. Our protocol design includes node discovery, authentication and fault tolerance. We show the protocol operation and provide the performance results in a controlled test bench. A comparison of our architecture and protocol with other published intercloud architecture proposals shows the benefits of implementing this new architecture in the real world.