An Architecture for a Management Agency for Cloud Resources

Cloud computing offers attractive options to migrate corporate applications without the end users needing to manage any physical resources. While this "ease" is appealing, several issues arise: 1) Which Cloud Providers (CPs) offer the best infrastructure at a fair budget? 2) I am no Cloud expert, then what are the characteristics of the infrastructure which best fit my application? To answer these questions, one must solve a resource management problem, that is, the allocation of computing, storage, networking and (indirectly) cost resources to a set of applications such that the performance objectives of the application are fulfilled. There are many approaches which answer separately these questions but there is no comprehensive and easily usable solution for these issues. MANeUveR solves them by integrating the following components: 1) a Web User Interface offers the end user the possibility to describe his application in terms of interactions between components and their software and hardware requirements, 2) an Offers Management System, through a crawler, periodically updates an ontology with infrastructure and services details from different CPs, 3) a Recommendation Engine provides a (sub) optimal solution for application deployment in the CP infrastructure regarding the leasing price of the virtual machines needed for deployment and their characteristics. Using a secure-billing e-mail service, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our solution.