This document summarizes key research challenges in cloud computing, including platform management, cloud-enabled applications and platforms, cloud aggregation, cloud management, cloud enablement, and cloud interoperability. It discusses open research issues in these areas and references ongoing research projects and an open-source toolkit called OpenNebula that is a flagship international project in cloud computing.

1. 3rd EU-Japan Symposium on Future
Internet and New Generation Networks
Tampere, Finland
October 20th, 2010
Ignacio M. Llorente
1/17
Acknowledgments
Commons Attribution Share Alike (CC-BY-SA)
Key Research Challenges in
Cloud Computing
Head of DSA Research Group
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Project co-Lead and Director
OpenNebula Open-source Cloud Community

2. 2/17Key Research Challenges in Cloud Computing
What Who
On-demand
access to any
application
End-user
(does not care about hw or sw)
Platform for
building and
delivering web
applications
Developer
(no managing of the
underlying hw & swlayers)
Raw computer
infrastructure
System Administrator
(complete management of the
computer infrastructure)
Software
as a Service
ﾺ
Platform
as a Service
Infrastructure
as a Service
Physical Infrastructure
A Model for Delivering IT Capabilities as a Service

3. 3/17Key Research Challenges in Cloud Computing
 Simple Web Interface
 Pay-as-you-go (On-demand access)
 Elastic & “infinite” Capacity
A “Public Cloud behind the firewall”
 Simplify internal operations
 Dynamic allocation of resources
 Higher utilization & operational savings
 Security concerns
Public Cloud
Private Cloud
• Supplement the capacity of the Private Cloud
• Utility Computing dream made a reality!
Hybrid Cloud
Cloud Deployments

4. 4/17Key Research Challenges in Cloud Computing
Cloud Computing as an Enabler for the Internet of Services
VM
VM
VM
Service
User
PaaS and IaaS
• The tools to develop applications and the
infrastructure are available as a service
SaaS
• Software applications are available as a
service in the Internet
Service
Provider
Cloud Computing as an Enabler
• Reduce infrastructure management complexity
• Automatic scalability
• Cloudbursting
• Reduce infrastructure costs
• Pay-per-use (utility) models
• Reduce development time
• Speed-up time-to-market of services
Service
Front-ends
eGov
Cluster
Computing
Service
Platforms
Web Multimedia

5. 5/17Key Research Challenges in Cloud Computing
PaaS Cloud Management
Cloud-enabled Applications and Platforms
Cloud Aggregation
IaaS Cloud Management
Cloud Enablement
CloudInteroperability
Open Research Issues

6. 6/17Key Research Challenges in Cloud Computing
Platform Management
Challenges in delivering middleware capabilities for building, deploying,
integrating and managing applications in a multi-tenant, elastic and scalable
environment
• Scalability and multi-tenancy of application containers
• Placement optimization algorithms of containers in resources
Application
Instances
Application
Containers
Resources
Service
Consumer
IaaS
PaaS
SaaS

7. 7/17Key Research Challenges in Cloud Computing
Cloud-enabled Applications and Platforms
Challenges in building cloud-enabled applications and platforms to take
advantage of the scalability, agility and reliability of the cloud
• Elastic and scalable applications and frameworks on very large-scale
environments
• Self-scaling, self-awareness, self-knowledge, and self-management
capabilities of services
• Novel applications of cloud computing
• Power-efficient applications and platforms
Load
Balancer
App
Server
App
Server
App
Server

8. 8/17Key Research Challenges in Cloud Computing
Cloud Aggregation
Research challenges in the aggregation of resources from diverse cloud
providers adding additional layers of service management
• Novel architectural models for aggregation of cloud providers
• Brokering algorithms for high availability, performance, proximity, legal
domains, price, or energy efficiency
• Sharing of resources between cloud providers
• Networking in the deployment of services across multiple cloud providers
• SLA negotiation and management between cloud providers
• Additional privacy, security and trust management layers atop providers
• Support of context-aware applications
• Automatic management of service elasticity
Cloud Aggregation

9. 9/17Key Research Challenges in Cloud Computing
Cloud Management
Research challenges in delivering infrastructure resources on-demand in a
multi-tenant, secure, elastic and scalable environment
• Scalable management of network, computing and storage capacity
• Scalable orchestration of virtualized resources and data
• Placement optimization algorithms for energy efficiency, load balancing,
high availability and QoS
• Accounting, billing, monitoring and pricing models
• Security, privacy and trust issues in the cloud
• Energy efficiency models, metrics and tools at system and datacenter levels

10. 10/17Key Research Challenges in Cloud Computing
Cloud Enablement
Research challenges in enhancing platform infrastructure to support cloud
management requirements
• Technologies for virtualization of infrastructure resources
• Virtualization of high performance infrastructure components
• Autonomic and intelligent management of resources
• Implications of Cloud paradigm on networking and storage systems
• Support for vertical elasticity
• Provision of service related metrics

11. 11/17Key Research Challenges in Cloud Computing
Cloud Interoperability
Challenges to ensure that the available cloud services can work together
and interoperate successfully.
• Common and standard interfaces for cloud computing
• Portability of virtual appliances across diverse clouds providers
Private Cloud Hybrid Cloud
Public Cloud
Cloud Management

12. 12/17Key Research Challenges in Cloud Computing
PaaS Cloud Management
Cloud-enabled Applications and Platforms
Cloud Aggregation
IaaS Cloud Management
Cloud Enablement
CloudInteroperability
Ongoing Research Projects
Vision Cloud
CumuloNimbo

13. 13/17Key Research Challenges in Cloud Computing
Non-Technical Challenges to Boost Adoption
Boost Adoption of Cloud Technologies
Technology
Gap
Cultural
Gap
Usability
Gap
• Research Initiatives
• Promote OSS
• Focused Innovation
• Standards
• Interoperability
• Legalistic issues,
trust and security
• Educate users
• Provide exp. testbeds
Main Areas for EU-Japan Collaboration

14. 14/17Key Research Challenges in Cloud Computing
Building an Open Cloud Ecosystem
Openness
• Open architectures
• Open interfaces
• Open code
Adaptability
• Modular architectures
Standardization
• Use standards
• Implement standards
Re-use
• Re-use existing open-source components
• Contribute to existing communitties
Key Principles to
Maximize Value

15. 15/17Key Research Challenges in Cloud Computing
Open-source Toolkit
Open platform for innovation to research the challenges that arise in cloud
management, and production-ready tool in both academia and industry
Flagship International Project in Cloud Computing
Result of many years of research and development in efficient and scalable
management of virtual machines on large-scale distributed infrastructures.
• Started in 2005, first release in march 2008
• Open-source released under Apache v2.0, packaged for main Linux distributions
• Mailing lists for best-effort support and open development framework
• Development and roadmap definition driven by the community and projects
• Active and engaged open community and ecosystem
• > 3,000 downloads/month (not including code repository and Ubuntu)
The OpenNebula Case

16. 16/17Key Research Challenges in Cloud Computing
Reference Open Source Stack for Cloud Computing
Open Source Community
• Open architecture and interfaces
• Open code
• Open community and ecosystem
• Very liberal license
Wide Adoption
• Tool for innovation
• Build a commercial service
• Build a commercial product
Avoid Software Fragmentation
Re-use sw ComponentsAdopt Standards

17. 17/17Key Research Challenges in Cloud Computing
References, Questions and Comments
Reports
• The Future of Cloud Computing. Opportunities
for European Cloud Computing Beyond 2010,
Expert Group Report (http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict
/ssai/docs/cloud-report-final.pdf)
Research References
• B. Rochwerger, J. Caceres, R.S. Montero, D. Breitgand, E. Elmroth, A. Galis, E.
Levy,I.M. Llorente, K. Nagin, Y. Wolfsthal, “The RESERVOIR Model and Architecture
for Open Federated Cloud Computing”, IBM Systems Journal, Vol. 53, No. 4. (2009)
• B. Sotomayor, R. S. Montero, I. M. Llorente and I. Foster, “Virtual Infrastructure
Management in Private and Hybrid Clouds”, IEEE Internet Computing, September/
October 2009 (vol. 13 no. 5)
• Rafael Moreno-Vozmediano, Ruben S. Montero, Ignacio M. Llorente, “Multi-Cloud
Deployment of Computing Clusters for Loosely-Coupled MTC Applications”, IEEE
Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, in press