Cloud Computing

An Overview of Existing Tools for Fault-Injection and Dependability Benchmarking in Grids

by Sebastien Tixeuil

Cloud Computing Adoption by SMEs in the Norh East of England: A multi-perspective framework.

by Savvas Papagiannidis

Published in Journal of Enterprise Information Management

Purpose – This paper’s research objective is to contribute to a growing body of research on cloud computing, by... more Purpose – This paper’s research objective is to contribute to a growing body of research on cloud computing, by studying the SME adoption process. If SMEs have access to scalable technologies they could potentially deliver products and services that in the past only large enterprises could deliver, flattening the competitive arena.

Design/methodology/approach – By adopting the Technological, Organisational and Environmental (TOE) as a theoretical base, this qualitative exploratory study used semi-structured interviews to collect data in fifteen different SMEs and service providers in the North East of England. The North East of England was selected as it is a region that aspires to become home to innovative digital firms and most of the companies in the region are SMEs.

Findings - The main factors that were identified as playing a significant role in SME adoption of cloud services were: relative advantage, uncertainty, geo-restriction, compatibility, trialability, size, top management support, prior experience, innovativeness, industry, market scope, supplier efforts and external computing support. In contrast, this study did not find enough evidence that competitive pressure was a significant determinant of cloud computing adoption.

Research limitations/implications – These findings have important implications and great value to the research community, managers and ICT providers, in terms of formulating better strategies for cloud computing adoption. For service providers, using the research model in this study can assist in increasing their understanding of why some SMEs choose to adopt cloud computing services, while seemingly similar ones facing similar market conditions do not. Also, cloud computing providers may need to improve their interaction with SMEs who are involved in the cloud computing experience, in an effort to create a healthy environment for cloud computing adoption, and to remove any vagueness surrounding this type of technology.

Originality/value – This study is an attempt to explore and develop an SME cloud computing adoption model that was theoretically grounded in the TOE framework. By adopting the TOE framework this study has shown that the three contexts of this framework (technological, organisational, and environmental) are connected to each other.

A Cloud-based Virtual Observatory for Environmental Science

by Yehia El-khatib

Informing Parents with the Victorian Education Ultranet

by Dr Eva Dakich

Tatnall, A. and Dakich, E. Proceedings of Informing Science & IT Education Conference (InSITE) 2011

Parents of school children want to be well informed and know as much as possible about their
children’s school... more Parents of school children want to be well informed and know as much as possible about their
children’s school and how their children are progressing at school. In mid-2010 in Victoria, Australia the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development launched the Ultranet, a
new web-based product designed to support knowledge sharing, curriculum delivery and online
learning and teaching. This paper describes the Ultranet, how it has been developed and how it is
to be used to inform parents, but as the Ultranet was only beginning to come into operation in late
2010 it has not been possible to include any research findings. With its facilities to inform parents
and to offer collaboration features to teachers, the Ultranet appears to be something not attempted
anywhere before. The paper is thus a theoretical one discussing the Ultranet’s design and possibilities, and is framed by using both an Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and Siemens’ Theory of
Connectivism. Later papers will examine how the Ultranet performs in practice.
Keywords: Informing communities, Ultranet, Web 2.0 technologies, knowledge sharing, school
communities, curriculum delivery, online learning, actor-network theory, connectivism.

The Ultranet as a Future Social Network: An Actor-Network Analysis

by Dr Eva Dakich

Davey, B., Tatnall, A., and Dakich E., (2011) 24th Bled eConference eFuture: Creating Solutions for the Individual, Organisations and Society June 12 - 15, 2011; Bled, Slovenia

Community development is seen as an increasingly important role for government and the potential of Web 2.0 tools to... more Community development is seen as an increasingly important role for government and the potential of Web 2.0 tools to aid in community development seems obvious. An experimental technology relating to e-government is being introduced by the State Government of Victoria, Australia. This involves a closed social network called the Ultranet which is intended to support social communities of parents, teachers and students in State schools. In this paper the Ultranet is seen as an innovation, and handled accordingly. An Actor-Network approach was used to identify problematisations of this new network and the actors that it seeks to involve and hence to identify potential translations of the innovation. Analysis of these potential translations allows the creation of a theoretical framework that permits a sensible review of the introduction of the Ultranet. The framework allows for the possible production of communities of practice amongst teachers, a ‘door’ for parental involvement as opposed to the ‘windows’ currently common in education, with an ideal that involves a Web 2.0 supported community where all parties (students, teachers, Education Ministry resources, parents and the local community) contribute. The paper will suggest that perhaps this is the future of safe, secure social networking for schools.

The Victorian Schools Ultranet – an Australian eGovernment Initiative

by Dr Eva Dakich

Tatnall, A., Michael, I. and Dakich, E (2011). The International Information Systems Conference (iiSC), Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, Sultanat of Oman, October 11-12, 2011

Cursing the Cloud (or) Controlling the Cloud?

by Noriswadi Ismail

Factors that promote or inhibit the implementation of e-health systems: an explanatory systematic review

by Frances Mair

Co-authored with: Carl May, Catherine O’Donnell, Tracy Finch, Frank Sullivan & Elizabeth Murray

Objective To systematically review the literature on the implementation of e-health to identify: (1) barriers and... more Objective To systematically review the literature on the implementation of e-health to identify: (1) barriers and facilitators to e-health implementation, and (2) outstanding gaps in research on the subject.
Methods MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PSYCINFO and the Cochrane Library were searched for reviews published between 1 January 1995 and 17 March 2009. Studies had to be systematic reviews, narrative reviews, qualitative metasyntheses or meta-ethnographies of e-health implementation. Abstracts and papers were double screened and data were extracted on country of origin; e-health domain; publication date; aims and methods; databases searched; inclusion and exclusion criteria and number of papers included. Data were analysed qualitatively using normalization process theory as an explanatory coding framework.
Findings Inclusion criteria were met by 37 papers; 20 had been published between 1995 and 2007 and 17 between 2008 and 2009. Methodological quality was poor: 19 papers did not specify the inclusion and exclusion criteria and 13 did not indicate the precise number of articles screened. The use of normalization process theory as a conceptual framework revealed that relatively little attention was paid to: (1) work directed at making sense of e-health systems, specifying their purposes and benefits, establishing their value to users and planning their implementation; (2) factors promoting or inhibiting engagement and participation; (3) effects on roles and responsibilities; (4) risk management, and (5) ways in which implementation processes might be reconfigured by user-produced knowledge.
Conclusion The published literature focused on organizational issues, neglecting the wider social framework that must be considered when introducing new technologies.

Deduplication and Compression Techniques in Cloud Design

by Shrisha Rao

By Amrita Upadhyay, Pratibha R Balihalli, Shashibhushan Ivaturi and Shrisha Rao.  6th Annual IEEE International Systems Conference (IEEE SysCon 2012), Vancouver, Canada, March 2012.

Our approach to deduplication and compression in cloud computing aims at reduction in storage space and band- width... more Our approach to deduplication and compression in cloud computing aims at reduction in storage space and band- width usage during file transfers. The design depends on multiple metadata structures for deduplication. Only a copy of the duplicate files is retained while others are deleted. The existence of duplicate files is determined from the metadata. The files are clustered into bins depending on their size. They are then seg- mented, deduplicated, compressed and stored. Binning restricts the number of segments and their sizes so that it is optimum for each file size. When the user requests a file, compressed segments of the file are sent over the network along with the file-to-segment mapping. These are the uncompressed and combined to create a complete file, hence minimizing bandwidth requirements.

Cloud-Based Personal Knowledge Management as a service (PKMaaS)

by Farzad Sabetzadeh

Coauthored with Eric Tsui and Ricky Cheong

Personal Learning Environments (PLE) are set up by learners using a dynamic and growing set of Web 2.0 tools which,... more Personal Learning Environments (PLE) are set up by learners using a dynamic and growing set of Web 2.0 tools which, together, foster a rich knowledge, highly personalized and collaborative environment. While there is a lot of ongoing work and successes in developing the Web 2.0 technologies, the
issues of how to leverage on PLE to truly foster a co-learning environment and how to identify "experts" (or more knowledgeable people) in PLEs have not been explored so far. Invariably, as in any learning communities, different levels of expertise (and experience) exist in a community. Novice learners often lack the needed knowledge and experience in configuring their most effective PLEs. Successful and easy location of experts can not only improve learning processes and also enhance the quality of the environment for all learners. This
paper presents an ontology-based expert locator framework for supporting personal learning in a Web 2.0 environment.

Guidelines for Building a Private Cloud Infrastructure - Technical Report

by Zoran Pantić

Technical Report co-authored with dr. M. Ali Babar
"Guidelines for Building a Private Cloud Infrastructure"
Tech Report TR-2012-153
ISBN: 978-87-7949-254-7
IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark, 2012

This Tech Report consist of 4 documents: this one, and the companion booklets 1, 2 and 3.

Cloud computing... more This Tech Report consist of 4 documents: this one, and the companion booklets 1, 2 and 3.

Cloud computing has become an extremely attractive area of research and practice over the last few years. An increasing number of public and private sector organizations have either adopted cloud computing based solutions or are seriously considering a move to cloud computing. However, there are many concerns about adopting and using public cloud solutions. Hence, private cloud solutions are becoming an attractive alternative to a large number of companies. We initiated a project aimed at designing and setting up a private cloud infrastructure in an academic and scientific environment based on open source software. One of the key objectives of this project was to create relevant material for providing a reference guide on the use of open source software for designing and implementing a private cloud.

The primary focus on this document is to provide a brief background on different theoretical concepts of cloud computing and then elaborate on the practical aspects concerning the design, installation and implementation of a private cloud using open source solution. It is expected that organizations looking at the possibilities for implementing cloud solutions would benefit from getting the basics, and a view on the different aspects of cloud computing in this document. Defining the cloud computing; analysis of the economical, security, legality, privacy, confidentiality aspects. There is also a short discussion about the potential impact on the employee’s future roles, and the challenges of migrating to cloud.

The main part of this report is concentrating on the practical infrastructure related questions and issues, supplied with practical guidelines and how-to-dos. The main topic was the design of the server and network infrastructure, and the distribution of the roles over the servers belonging to a private cloud. The management of the instances and the related subjects are out of the scope of this document. This document is accompanied by three supplemental books that contain material from our experiences of scaling out in the virtual environment and cloud implementation in a physical environment using the available server and networking equipments.

Guidelines to Private Cloud - Companion Booklet 1

by Zoran Pantić

Installing and Scaling out Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud in Virtual Environment
Guidelines to Private Cloud - Companion Booklet 1
Technical Report co-authored with dr. M. Ali Babar
"Guidelines for BuildingPrivateCloud Infrastructure"
Tech Report TR-2012-154
ISBN: 978-87-7949-255-4
IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark, 2012

This document contains the supplemental material to the book “Guidelines for Building a Private Cloud Infrastructure”.... more This document contains the supplemental material to the book “Guidelines for Building a Private Cloud Infrastructure”. This document provides guidance on how to install Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) in virtual environment, and afterwards how to scale out when needed.

The purpose of this supplemental book is to provide a practical, step-by-step, detailed guide on how to dimension and install the machines and network. Some initial steps of configuring the cloud are also covered. The installation is performed in a virtual environment based on Windows 7 and VMware Workstation 7.

The cloud installation is performed using the (for the time being) newest version of the UEC, based on the Ubuntu 11.04. The installation is performed using “CD Install” method (otherwise, there is also a “Package Install” method). Eucalyptus version installed is 2.0.2. This document also includes the initial setup of the newly installed cloud, both using the command line tools, and GUI based tool HybridFox.

Guidelines to Private Cloud - Companion Booklet 2

by Zoran Pantić

Installing Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud in a Physical Environment
Guidelines to Private Cloud - Companion Booklet 2
Technical Report co-authored with dr. M. Ali Babar
"Guidelines for BuildingPrivateCloud Infrastructure"
Tech Report TR-155
ISBN: 978-7949-256-1
IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark, 2012

This document contains the supplemental material to “Guidelines for Building a Private Cloud Infrastructure”. This... more This document contains the supplemental material to “Guidelines for Building a Private Cloud Infrastructure”. This supplemental material provides guidance on how to install Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC) in a physical environment. The purpose of this document is to provide a practical, step-by-step, detailed guide on how to pre-configure and install the machines and network. For more detailed description of the steps, a reader is advised to refer to another supplemental book named “Installing and Scaling out Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud in Virtual Environment.” (Booklet 1) There are a few more details, accompanied with screenshots.

The material included in this supplemental document is based on the installation that was performed in a physical environment based on HP ProLiant DL380 G41 servers, 100 Mbit/s switches, and a firewall/router that isolated the whole solution. The cloud installation was performed using the (for the time being) newest version of the UEC, based on the Ubuntu 11.04. The installation was performed using “CD Install” method2 (otherwise, there was also a “Package Install” method3). The material in this document is based on Eucalyptus version installed is 2.0.2.

Guidelines to Private Cloud - Companion Booklet 3

by Zoran Pantić

Troubleshooting during Installing Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud
Guidelines to Private Cloud - Companion Booklet 3
Technical Report co-authored with dr. M. Ali Babar
"Guidelines for BuildingPrivateCloud Infrastructure"
Tech Report TR-2012-156
ISBN: 978-87-7949-257-8
IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark, 2012

This document provides supplemental material to the book “Guidelines for building a private cloud infrastructure”.... more This document provides supplemental material to the book “Guidelines for building a private cloud infrastructure”.

This document describes the issues that can be expected during the different phases of the setup and installation of Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud.

This document also contains some useful practical information concerning the technologies involved.

A Hybrid Local Storage Transfer Scheme for Live Migration of I/O Intensive Workloads

by Bogdan Nicolae

published in "HPDC'12: The 21st International ACM Symposium on High-Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing", 2012.

Live migration of virtual machines (VMs) is key feature of virtualization that is extensively leveraged in IaaS cloud... more Live migration of virtual machines (VMs) is key feature of virtualization that is extensively leveraged in IaaS cloud environments: it is the basic building block of several important features, such as load balancing, pro-active fault tolerance, power management, online maintenance, etc. While most live migration efforts concentrate on how to transfer the memory from source to destination during the migration process, comparatively little attention has been devoted to the transfer of storage. This problem is gaining increasing importance: due to performance reasons, virtual machines that run large-scale, data-intensive applications tend to rely on local storage, which poses a difficult challenge on live migration: it needs to handle storage transfer in addition to memory transfer. This paper proposes a memory migration independent approach that addresses this challenge. It relies on a hybrid active push / prioritized prefetch strategy, which makes it highly resilient to rapid changes of disk state exhibited by I/O intensive workloads. At the same time, it is minimally intrusive in order to ensure a maximum of portability with a wide range of hypervisors. Large scale experiments that involve multiple simultaneous migrations of both synthetic benchmarks and a real scientific application show improvements of up to 10x faster migration time, 10x less bandwidth consumption and 8x less performance degradation over state-of art.

WiGiTGroupOpenSpecificationsforWirelessGridsVo.1McKnight3.27.2102

by Lee McKnight

The Curriculum Forcast for Portland: Cloudy with a Chance of Data

by Michael Grossniklaus

ACM SIGMOD Record 41(1) (2012)

With the advent of cloud computing, new data management technologies and systems have emerged that differ from... more With the advent of cloud computing, new data management technologies and systems have emerged that differ from existing databases in important ways. As a consequence, universities are currently facing the challenge of integrating these topics into their curriculum in order to prepare students for the changed IT landscape. In this report, we describe the approach we have taken at Portland State University to teach data management in the cloud. We also present our experiences with this effort and give an outlook on how it could be adapted to suit the requirements of other universities.

Cost Model for Running Hybrid Clouds

by mohammad mahdi kashef

Co-authored with professor Jorn Altmann
to be presented in GECON 2011 - 8th International Workshop on Economics of Grids, Clouds, Systems, and Services

GRASS GIS in the Cloud

by Markus Neteler

Implementation of a Scalable Next Generation Sequencing Business Cloud Platform--An Experience Report

by Harsh Vachhani

Life science industry is looking towards new and cost-effective ways to manage and analyze huge amount of genomic data... more Life science industry is looking towards new and cost-effective ways to manage and analyze huge amount of genomic data for faster innovation in drug or biologics discovery. To that effect, various alliances among competitive organizations are getting formed, such as the Pistoia Alliance, to collaborate and share a pool of genomic data and build useful search and analysis techniques for the alliance partners. In order to make the development, and management of data and applications cost-effective, a secure cloud computing based platforms are being considered. In this paper we describe an experience report of building such a collaborative platform on Amazon cloud platform. In order to build a scalable genome sequence alignment solution, we have adopted the well-known BLAST framework on Hadoop platform. A major challenge here is that the BLAST executable requires to be ported as it is, and yet the execution needs to scale, as the number of jobs increases, by elastically growing the Hadoop infrastructure. In this paper we proposed a BLAST database partitioning solution to achieve optimal scalability. Our controlled experiment is encouraging, the empirical result shows that the job execution scales with the number of jobs, if the partition sizes are chosen appropriately.