Self-Optimizing Architecture for Ensuring Quality Attributes in the Cloud

We describe various challenges in ensuring Quality
Attributes (QA) of applications hosted in the cloud and
hence the perceived quality of service of the cloud as a whole.
We advocate a self-management/optimization architecture-driven approach to ensure that Quality Attributes are met. We
discuss the limitations of current approaches to self-managing
architecture. We propose a novel approach, which exploits
the El Farol problem as a modelling mechanism for QAs in
architectures of applications in the cloud. The approach uses
Service Level Agreements (SLA) and Utility Theory to direct
the self-optimization. We conclude by looking at directions for
further work.

Design of a Market-Based Mechanism for Quality Attribute Tradeoff of Services in the Cloud

Cloud computing, with its promise of (almost) unlimited
computation, storage and bandwidth, is increasingly becoming
the infrastructure of choice for many organizations. As
applications gain in popularity and mature, the quality attributes
demanded of them change significantly. Applications
that manage themselves and exhibit different quality
attributes, based on demand, are the ideal that we would
like to have. Creating self-managing applications for the
cloud present significant problems, since the cloud infrastructure is not under the application architect’s control. We propose an initial design of novel market-based mechanism
to allow web-applications living on the cloud to self-manage
with regard to their quality attributes. We use a scenario to
exemplify and evaluate the approach.

Self-Optimisation of Distributed Applications In the Cloud