Runtime Virtual Machine Recontextualization for Clouds

Abstract

We extend cloud application contextualization, i.e. the dynamic configuration of a VM upon initialization, to leverage the full potential of cloud hosting by introducing the idea of recontextualization. We present a runtime cloud recontextualization mechanism to allow VM images and instances to be dynamically re-configured without restarts or downtime. The mechanism is applicable to all aspects of configuring a VM from virtual hardware to multi-tier software stacks, without the need to customize the guest VM. We present our work via a use case: the reconfiguration of a cross-cloud migratable monitoring service in a dynamic cloud environment. We discuss the details of the interoperable recontextualization mechanism, its architecture and demonstrate a proof of concept implementation through a performance evaluation. The results of this evaluation show that the solution performs adequately with an overhead of 18% of the total migration time, illustrating the feasibility of the solution.

Towards energy aware cloud computing application construction

“…This sits alongside previous work [14,22] that allows for the contextualisation and recontextualisation of virtual machines, so that the environment can be reconfigured dynamically at runtime, leading to a dynamic reconfigurable environment. This is key to support: 1) adaptive software development processes in a cloud architecture, and 2) the energy efficiency goal within the architecture by providing means of packaging cloud applications in a way that enables provider agnostic deployment, while maintaining energy awareness.…”

Towards an interoperable energy efficient Cloud computing architecture - practice & experience

“…In the service deployment stage, research effort has focused on Service Level Agreement (SLA) deployment strategies especially with regard to SLAs that are energy-aware, e.g. by implementing specific policies to save energy [12], [11], as well as service deployment technologies which play a critical role in the management of the cloud infrastructure and thus have an effect on its overall energy consumption [3]. In the service operation stage, energy efficiency has been extensively studied and has focused for example on approaches towards energy management for distributed management of Virtual Machines (VMs) in cloud infrastructures, where the goal is to improve the utilization of computing resources and reduce energy consumption under workload independent quality of service constraints [2].…”

“…3) Negotiation -A number of rounds of Service Level Agreement (SLA) negotiation are performed with suitable Cloud providers that meet the requirements of the application contained within its descriptor. 4) Contextualization -The application is configured in the context of the Cloud provider's environment for which it is about to be executed (see [3] for details). 5) Deployment -The application is distributed to and scheduled on the physical infrastructure of the selected Cloud provider.…”

Contextualization: dynamic configuration of virtual machines

“…In our previous work [6] we discuss the nature of contextualization in the light of the OPTIMIS project [4]. We present details of the architecture and implementation of our tool for the contextualization of platform level services as well as virtual infrastructure.…”

“…In our earlier work [6] we present and define recontextualization, an emerging technology to allow contextual data inside running VMs to be updated during runtime. This work extends on earlier work on recontextualization and contextualization [3] and presents a novel layered based approach to contextualization.…”