Title: Modelling, design and evaluation of multi-objective cloud brokering

Authors: Alba Amato; Salvatore Venticinque

Addresses: Department of Industrial and Information Engineering, Second University of Naples, Via Roma 29, 81031 Aversa (CE), Italy ' Department of Industrial and Information Engineering, Second University of Naples, Via Roma 29, 81031 Aversa (CE), Italy

Abstract: To enjoy the benefits of cloud computing, it is necessary to select the providers whose offer best fits user's needs, carefully evaluating features and pricing. Currently, the choice of a cloud computing vendor is really difficult because it needs to map application requirements, well known to cloud customers, properties of cloud services and service levels offered by providers. Furthermore no negotiation services are available, and options are different in terms of service properties, general conditions and service levels that providers ensure. Service Level Agreements (SLA) use proprietary metrics that make difficult to evaluate properly each offer and to perform a clear comparison. A decision support for the user to choose the best cloud solution that satisfies his/her requirement is desired. In this paper, we present a model for measuring compliance of SLAs by different providers with the user's requirements and for their comparison, in order to broker the best proposal the cloud market. We describe its implementation within cloud agency and discuss preliminary experimental results.

Keywords: agents; cloud provisioning; cloud brokering; multi-objective optimisation; modelling; cloud computing vendors; SLA compliance; SLAs; service level agreements; service provider evaluation; service provider selection; pricing; cloud services; service levels.

DOI: 10.1504/IJWGS.2015.067163

International Journal of Web and Grid Services, 2015 Vol.11 No.1, pp.21 - 38

Received: 24 Jul 2013
Accepted: 22 Mar 2014
Published online: 31 Jan 2015 *

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