Cloud query manager: uso de web semântica para evitar o problema de aprisionamento em IaaS

Cloud computing can be defined as a distributed computational model by through resources (hardware, storage, development platforms and communication) are shared, as paid services accessible with minimal management effort and interaction. A great benefit of this model is to enable the use of various providers (e.g a multi-cloud architecture) to compose a set of services in order to obtain an optimal configuration for performance and cost. However, the multi-cloud use is precluded by the problem of cloud lock-in. The cloud lock-in is the dependency between an application and a cloud platform. It is commonly addressed by three strategies: (i) use of intermediate layer that stands to consumers of cloud services and the provider, (ii) use of standardized interfaces to access the cloud, or (iii) use of models with open specifications. This paper outlines an approach to evaluate these strategies. This approach was performed and it was found that despite the advances made by these strategies, none of them actually solves the problem of lock-in cloud. In this sense, this work proposes the use of Semantic Web to avoid cloud lock-in, where RDF models are used to specify the features of a cloud, which are managed by SPARQL queries. In this direction, this work: (i) presents an evaluation model that quantifies the problem of cloud lock-in, (ii) evaluates the cloud lock-in from three multi-cloud solutions and three cloud platforms, (iii) proposes using RDF and SPARQL on management of cloud resources, (iv) presents the cloud Query Manager (CQM), an SPARQL server that implements the proposal, and (v) comparing three multi-cloud solutions in relation to CQM on the response time and the effectiveness in the resolution of cloud lock-in.

Architettura cloud per lo sviluppo multi-piattaforma di Sistemi Operativi: Principi generali

Vengono analizzate le strategie di rilascio delle principali Distribuzioni Linux e i metodi per la compilazione automatizzata del software. Si propone quindi una nuova metodologia sia per il rilascio di media installabili e sia per la pacchettizzazione. Sfruttando le tecnologie del campo DevOps, si introduce quindi un alto grado di scalabilità anche in ambienti Cloud, grazie anche alla riproducibilità di ogni componente dell'infrastruttura proposta. Vedremo quindi come questo approccio aumenta l'automatizzazione nei cicli produttivi per la realizzazione della Distribuzione Sabayon Linux e per la definizione di un'infrastruttura automatizzata attualmente in production.

Architettura cloud per lo sviluppo multi-piattaforma di Sistemi Operativi: Applicazioni specifiche

Il mondo dell’Internet of Things e del single board computing sono settori in forte espansione al giorno d’oggi e le architetture ARM sono, al momento, i dominatori in questo ambito. I sistemi operativi e i software si stanno evolvendo per far fronte a questo cambiamento e ai nuovi casi d’uso che queste tecnologie introducono. In questa tesi ci occuperemo del porting della distribuzione Linux Sabayon per queste architetture, la creazione di un infrastruttura per il rilascio delle immagini e la compilazione dei pacchetti software.

Design and Implementation of a Cloud Infrastructure for Distributed Scientific Calculation

Cloud computing enables independent end users and applications to share data and pooled resources, possibly located in geographically distributed Data Centers, in a fully transparent way. This need is particularly felt by scientific applications to exploit distributed resources in efficient and scalable way for the processing of big amount of data. This paper proposes an open so- lution to deploy a Platform as a service (PaaS) over a set of multi- site data centers by applying open source virtualization tools to facilitate operation among virtual machines while optimizing the usage of distributed resources. An experimental testbed is set up in Openstack environment to obtain evaluations with different types of TCP sample connections to demonstrate the functionality of the proposed solution and to obtain throughput measurements in relation to relevant design parameters.

Computazione Embodied e Disembodied: Cloud-based IoT

La tesi esplora la co-esistenza di computazioni embodied e disembodied nei moderni sistemi software, adottando come caso di studio il recente trend che vede sempre più coesi e integrati sistemi per l'Internet of Things e sistemi Cloud-based. Si analizzano i principali modelli di comunicazione, protocolli di comunicazione e architetture situate. Inoltre si realizza una piattaforma IoT Middleware cloud-based per mostrare come la computazione possa essere distribuita lato embodied e disembodied.

Cumulon: Simplified Matrix-Based Data Analytics in the Cloud

Cumulon is a system aimed at simplifying the development and deployment of statistical analysis of big data in public clouds. Cumulon allows users to program in their familiar language of matrices and linear algebra, without worrying about how to map data and computation to specific hardware and cloud software platforms. Given user-specified requirements in terms of time, monetary cost, and risk tolerance, Cumulon automatically makes intelligent decisions on implementation alternatives, execution parameters, as well as hardware provisioning and configuration settings -- such as what type of machines and how many of them to acquire. Cumulon also supports clouds with auction-based markets: it effectively utilizes computing resources whose availability varies according to market conditions, and suggests best bidding strategies for them. Cumulon explores two alternative approaches toward supporting such markets, with different trade-offs between system and optimization complexity. Experimental study is conducted to show the efficiency of Cumulon's execution engine, as well as the optimizer's effectiveness in finding the optimal plan in the vast plan space.

Simulating Business Processes of Manufacturing SMEs on the Cloud

Simulating the efficiency of business processes could reveal crucial bottlenecks for manufacturing companies and could lead to significant optimizations resulting in decreased time to market, more efficient resource utilization, and larger profit. While such business optimization software is widely utilized by larger companies, SMEs typically do not have the required expertise and resources to efficiently exploit these advantages. The aim of this work is to explore how simulation software vendors and consultancies can extend their portfolio to SMEs by providing business process optimization based on a cloud computing platform. By executing simulation runs on the cloud, software vendors and associated business consultancies can get access to large computing power and data storage capacity on demand, run large simulation scenarios on behalf of their clients, analyze simulation results, and advise their clients regarding process optimization. The solution is mutually beneficial for both vendor/consultant and the end-user SME. End-user companies will only pay for the service without requiring large upfront costs for software licenses and expensive hardware. Software vendors can extend their business towards the SME market with potentially huge benefits.

D6.1 – Ecosystem Software Platform with Underlying Software Repository, Digital Library and Media Archive

The objective of D6.1 is to make the Ecosystem software platform with underlying Software Repository, Digital Library and Media Archive available to the degree, that the RAGE project can start collecting content in the form of software assets, and documents of various media types. This paper describes the current state of the Ecosystem as of month 12 of the project, and documents the structure of the Ecosystem, individual components, integration strategies, and overall approach. The deliverable itself is the deployment of the described components, which is now available to collect and curate content. Whilst this version is not yet feature complete, full realization is expected within the next few months. Following this development, WP6 will continue to add features driven by the business models to be defined by WP7 later on in the project.

Networking for conservation: social capital and perceptions of organizational success among land trust boards

As an important component in collaborative natural resource management and nonprofit governance, social capital is expected to be related to variations in the performance of land trusts. Land trusts are charitable organizations that work to conserve private land locally, regionally, or nationally. The purpose of this paper is to identify the level of structural and cognitive social capital among local land trusts, and how these two types of social capital relate to the perceived success of land trusts. The analysis integrates data for land trusts operating in the U.S. south-central Appalachian region, which includes western North Carolina, southwest Virginia, and east Tennessee. We use factor analysis to elicit different dimensions of cognitive social capital, including cooperation among board members, shared values, common norms, and communication effectiveness. Measures of structural social capital include the size and diversity of organizational networks of both land trusts and their board members. Finally, a hierarchical linear regression model is employed to estimate how cognitive and structural social capital measures, along with other organizational and individual-level attributes, relate to perceptions of land trust success, defined here as achievement of the land trusts’ mission, conservation, and financial goals. Results show that the diversity of organizational partnerships, cooperation, and shared values among land trust board members are associated with higher levels of perceived success. Organizational capacity, land trust accreditation, volunteerism, and financial support are also important factors influencing perceptions of success among local, nonprofit land trusts.

Dynamic Workload Parallelization and System Calibration on Single-Chip Cloud Computer

Many-core systems are emerging from the need of more computational power and power efficiency. However there are many issues which still revolve around the many-core systems. These systems need specialized software before they can be fully utilized and the hardware itself may differ from the conventional computational systems. To gain efficiency from many-core system, programs need to be parallelized. In many-core systems the cores are small and less powerful than cores used in traditional computing, so running a conventional program is not an efficient option. Also in Network-on-Chip based processors the network might get congested and the cores might work at different speeds. In this thesis is, a dynamic load balancing method is proposed and tested on Intel 48-core Single-Chip Cloud Computer by parallelizing a fault simulator. The maximum speedup is difficult to obtain due to severe bottlenecks in the system. In order to exploit all the available parallelism of the Single-Chip Cloud Computer, a runtime approach capable of dynamically balancing the load during the fault simulation process is used. The proposed dynamic fault simulation approach on the Single-Chip Cloud Computer shows up to 45X speedup compared to a serial fault simulation approach. Many-core systems can draw enormous amounts of power, and if this power is not controlled properly, the system might get damaged. One way to manage power is to set power budget for the system. But if this power is drawn by just few cores of the many, these few cores get extremely hot and might get damaged. Due to increase in power density multiple thermal sensors are deployed on the chip area to provide realtime temperature feedback for thermal management techniques. Thermal sensor accuracy is extremely prone to intra-die process variation and aging phenomena. These factors lead to a situation where thermal sensor values drift from the nominal values. This necessitates efficient calibration techniques to be applied before the sensor values are used. In addition, in modern many-core systems cores have support for dynamic voltage and frequency scaling. Thermal sensors located on cores are sensitive to the core's current voltage level, meaning that dedicated calibration is needed for each voltage level. In this thesis a general-purpose software-based auto-calibration approach is also proposed for thermal sensors to calibrate thermal sensors on different range of voltages.

HPC management and engineering in the hybrid cloud

The evolution and maturation of Cloud Computing created an opportunity for the emergence of new Cloud applications. High-performance Computing, a complex problem solving class, arises as a new business consumer by taking advantage of the Cloud premises and leaving the expensive datacenter management and difficult grid development. Standing on an advanced maturing phase, today’s Cloud discarded many of its drawbacks, becoming more and more efficient and widespread. Performance enhancements, prices drops due to massification and customizable services on demand triggered an emphasized attention from other markets. HPC, regardless of being a very well established field, traditionally has a narrow frontier concerning its deployment and runs on dedicated datacenters or large grid computing. The problem with common placement is mainly the initial cost and the inability to fully use resources which not all research labs can afford. The main objective of this work was to investigate new technical solutions to allow the deployment of HPC applications on the Cloud, with particular emphasis on the private on-premise resources – the lower end of the chain which reduces costs. The work includes many experiments and analysis to identify obstacles and technology limitations. The feasibility of the objective was tested with new modeling, architecture and several applications migration. The final application integrates a simplified incorporation of both public and private Cloud resources, as well as HPC applications scheduling, deployment and management. It uses a well-defined user role strategy, based on federated authentication and a seamless procedure to daily usage with balanced low cost and performance.

Relationship marketing in Latin American context: Implications for small Finnish software companies in Latin American B2B partnerships

After a productivity decrease of established national export industries in Finland such as mobile and paper industries, innovative, smaller companies with the intentions to internationalize right from the start have been proliferating. For software companies early internationalization is an especially good opportunity, as Internet usage becomes increasingly homogeneous across borders and software products often do not need a physical distribution channel. Globalization also makes Finnish companies turn to unfamiliar export markets like Latin America, a very untraditional market for Finns. Relationships consisting of Finnish and Latin American business partners have therefore not been widely studied, especially from a new-age software company’s perspective. To study these partnerships, relationship marketing theory was taken into the core of the study, as its practice focuses mainly on establishing and maintaining relationships with stakeholders at a profit, so that the objectives of all parties are met, which is done by a mutual exchange and fulfillment of promises. The most important dimensions of relationship marketing were identified as trust, commitment and attraction, which were then focused on, as the study aims to understand the implications Latin American business culture has for the understanding, and hence, effective application of relationship marketing in the Latin American market. The question to be answered consecutively was how should the dimensions of trust, commitment and attraction be understood in business relationships in Latin America? The study was conducted by first joining insights given by Latin American business culture literature with overall theories on the three dimensions. Through pattern matching, these insights were compared to empirical evidence collected from business professionals of the Latin American market and from the experiences of Finnish software businesses that had recently expanded into the market. What was found was that previous literature on Latin American business culture had already named many implications for the relationship marketing dimensions that were relevant also for small Finnish software firms on the market. However, key findings also presented important new drivers for the three constructs. Local presence in the area where the Latin American partner is located was found to drive or enhance trust, commitment and attraction. High-frequency follow up procedures were in turn found to drive commitment and attraction. Both local presence and follow up were defined according to the respective evidence in the study. Also, in the context of Finnish software firms in relationships with Latin American partners, the national origins or the foreignness of the Finnish party was seen to enhance trust and attraction in the relationship

Online MBPeT dashboard : enabling performance testing as a service in the cloud

In this thesis, tool support is addressed for the combined disciplines of Model-based testing and performance testing. Model-based testing (MBT) utilizes abstract behavioral models to automate test generation, thus decreasing time and cost of test creation. MBT is a functional testing technique, thereby focusing on output, behavior, and functionality. Performance testing, however, is non-functional and is concerned with responsiveness and stability under various load conditions. MBPeT (Model-Based Performance evaluation Tool) is one such tool which utilizes probabilistic models, representing dynamic real-world user behavior patterns, to generate synthetic workload against a System Under Test and in turn carry out performance analysis based on key performance indicators (KPI). Developed at Åbo Akademi University, the MBPeT tool is currently comprised of a downloadable command-line based tool as well as a graphical user interface. The goal of this thesis project is two-fold: 1) to extend the existing MBPeT tool by deploying it as a web-based application, thereby removing the requirement of local installation, and 2) to design a user interface for this web application which will add new user interaction paradigms to the existing feature set of the tool. All phases of the MBPeT process will be realized via this single web deployment location including probabilistic model creation, test configurations, test session execution against a SUT with real-time monitoring of user configurable metric, and final test report generation and display. This web application (MBPeT Dashboard) is implemented with the Java programming language on top of the Vaadin framework for rich internet application development. The Vaadin framework handles the complicated web communications processes and front-end technologies, freeing developers to implement the business logic as well as the user interface in pure Java. A number of experiments are run in a case study environment to validate the functionality of the newly developed Dashboard application as well as the scalability of the solution implemented in handling multiple concurrent users. The results support a successful solution with regards to the functional and performance criteria defined, while improvements and optimizations are suggested to increase both of these factors.

Protocol to design techniques for implementing software development best practices

Software engineering best practices allow significantly improving the software development. However, the implementation of best practices requires skilled professionals, financial investment and technical support to facilitate implementation and achieve the respective improvement. In this paper we proposes a protocol to design techniques to implement best practices of software engineering. The protocol includes the identification and selection of process to improve, the study of standards and models, identification of best practices associated with the process and the possible implementation techniques. In addition, technical design activities are defined in order to create or adapt the techniques of implementing best practices for software development.