The document discusses the issues of vendor lock-in with existing cloud computing services and proposes a "meta cloud" as a solution. Specifically:
- Companies are hesitant to fully adopt cloud services due to concerns about availability, data lock-in, and legal issues with existing cloud vendor offerings. Migrating between vendors is difficult due to technical incompatibilities.
- The proposed "meta cloud" would incorporate design-time and runtime components to abstract away technical differences between cloud vendors. This would mitigate vendor lock-in by making it easier for companies to find suitable cloud services and migrate applications between vendors.
- Key components of the meta cloud include standardized APIs, abstraction libraries, and tools that help with initial
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7. introduction
1. 1
CHAPTER - 1
INTRODUCTION
The cloud computing paradigm has found widespread adoption
throughout the last years. The reason for the success of cloud computing is
the possibility to use services on-demand with a pay as you go pricing model,
which proved to be convenient in many respects. Because of low costs and
high flexibility, migrating to the cloud is indeed compelling. Despite the
obvious advantages of cloud computing, many companies hesitate to move
into the cloud", mainly because of concerns related to availability of service,
data lock-in, and legal uncertainties
Lock-in is particularly problematic for the following reasons. Firstly,
even though availability of public clouds is generally high, eventual outages
still occur
If this is the case, businesses locked into such a cloud are essentially
at a standstill until the cloud is back online. Secondly, public cloud providers
generally do not guarantee particular service level agreements i.e.,
businesses locked into a cloud have no guarantees that this cloud will
continue to provide the required Quality of Service (QoS) tomorrow. Thirdly,
the terms of service of most public cloud providers allow the provider to
unilaterally change pricing of their service at any time.
Hence, a business locked in a cloud has no mid or long term control
over their own IT costs. At the core of all of these problems, we can identify a
need for businesses to permanently monitor the cloud they are using , and to
be able to rapidly change horses", i.e., migrate to a different cloud if
monitoring discovers problems or estimations fore-see issues in the future.
However, migration is currently far from trivial. A plethora of cloud providers is
hooding the market with a confusing body of services, such as computer
services e.g., Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and VMware vCloud, or
key-value stores, e.g., Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3). Evidently, some
of these services are conceptually comparable to each other, others are vastly
2. WINDS OF CHANGE FROM VENDOR INTRODUCTION
LOCK-IN TO THE META CLOUD
2
different, but all of them are, ultimately, technically incompatible and follow no
standards but their own. To further complicate the situation, many companies
are not (only) building on public clouds for their cloud computing needs, but
combine public openings with their own private cloud, leading to so-called
hybrid cloud setups
The concept of a meta cloud consisting of a combination of design time
and runtime components. Meta cloud abstracts away from technical
incompatibilities of existing openings, thus mitigating vendor lock-in. It helps to
end the right set of cloud services for a particular use case, and supports an
applications initial deployment and runtime migration.
The Current Weather in the (Meta) Cloud
Firstly, standardized programmings APIs are required to enable the
development of cloud-neutral applications, which are not hardwired to any
single provider or cloud service. Cloud provider abstraction libraries such as
libcloud2, fog3, and jclouds4 provide united APIs for accessing cloud products
of different vendors. Using these libraries, developers are relieved of
technological vendor lock-in, as they can switch cloud providers for their
applications with relatively low overhead.
Inside the Meta Cloud
To some extent, the meta cloud can be realized based on a
combination of existing tools and concepts, part of which are presented in the
previous section. The main components of the meta cloud, depicted in Figure
1, are described in the following and their interplay is illustrated using the
previously introduced sports betting portal example. The components of the
meta cloud can be distinguished whether they are mainly important for cloud
software engineers during development time or whether they perform tasks
during runtime.
3. WINDS OF CHANGE FROM VENDOR INTRODUCTION
LOCK-IN TO THE META CLOUD
3
1.1 Objective of the project
The user initializes the public and secret parameters of the system
by executing Key Gen and preprocesses the data file F by using Sig Gen to
generate the verification metadata. The user then stores the data file F and
the verification metadata at the cloud server, and delete its local copy. As part
of preprocessing, the user may alter the data file F by expanding it or
including additional metadata to be stored at server.
To effectively support public auditability without having to retrieve the
data blocks themselves, the HLA technique can be used. HLAs like MACs are
also some unforgivable verification metadata that authenticate the integrity of
a data block. The difference is that HLAs can be aggregated.
In cloud computing, outsourced data might not only be accessed but
also updated frequently by users for various application purposes Hence,
supporting data dynamics for privacy-preserving public auditing is also of
paramount importance.
1.2 Existing System
Cloud providers are flooding the market with a confusing body of
services, including computer services such as the Amazon Elastic Compute
Cloud (EC2) and VMware v Cloud, or key-value stores, such as the Amazon
Simple Storage Service (S3). Some of these services are conceptually
comparable to each other, whereas others are vastly different, but they’re all,
ultimately, technically incompatible and follow no standards but their own. To
further complicate the situation, many companies not (only) build on public
clouds for their cloud computing needs, but combine public offerings with their
own private clouds, leading to so-called hybrid clouds.
Disadvantages of existing system:
Its success is due largely to customers’ ability to use services on
demand with a pay-as-you go pricing model, which has proved
convenient in many aspects.
Low costs and high flexibility make migrating to the cloud compelling.
4. WINDS OF CHANGE FROM VENDOR INTRODUCTION
LOCK-IN TO THE META CLOUD
4
1.3 Proposed System
Here, we introduce the concept of a meta cloud that incorporates
design time and runtime components. This meta cloud would abstract away
from existing offerings’ technical incompatibilities, thus mitigating vendor lock-
in. It helps users find the right set of cloud services for a particular use case
and supports an application’s initial deployment and runtime migration.
Advantages of proposed system:
The concept of a Meta cloud that incorporates design time and runtime
components.
This Meta cloud would abstract away from existing offerings’ technical
incompatibilities, thus mitigating vendor lock-in.