Service-Oriented Cloud Computing Infrastructure (SOCCI) Framework – Enabling Applicable Architectural Layers
SOCCI High-Level View
SOCCI Architecture Building Blocks (ABBs) consist of the SOCCI elements and SOCCI Management Building Blocks. The former leverages the latter to interface with the users. The SOCCI Management Building Blocks are categorized as operation-centric and business-centric. The division between the two is dependent on the type of service provided. The Business ABBs relate to supporting the business functions needed to be able to create, support, and consume an IaaS offering; e.g. metering, billing, and location management. The Operational ABBs relate to operational functions supporting/leveraging the SOCCI elements to provide the operational management services; e.g., virtualization and provisioning management.
SOCCI Management Building Blocks that enable SOCCI are described below.
Business ABBs
Metering Manager
Metering Manager (measured service enabler) tracks consumer usage statistics for the usage of virtual networks and resources from aggregated data including usage statistics and number of network devices deployed. It also provides aggregation of metering and multi-tenancy-aware measurement metering information on different levels of aggregates (routers, FWs/IDS, WANs, etc.).
- Aggregation of measuring covers a single element of SOCCI metering (i.e., storage, network, or facilities) measurement aggregation.
- Multi-tenancy-aware measuring provides per-tenant measurements, for a subset view of aggregation of measuring.
Billing Manager
Billing Manager often relies on the Metering Manager to gather the usage data so that it can issue applicable billing charges to the consumer based upon contractual agreements, determined by the tenant-level aggregated usage of virtual network and resource metering information. Based on the type of contract, each tenant may have different charges including fixed charges, discounts, coupons, etc. that the billing manager needs to account for. It will also help to settle charges with external service providers that provide additional services as part of virtual networks. The Billing Manager manages the generation of a summary of charges for a given billing cycle and conveying charges and payments made/due.
Location Manager
Location Manager helps to geographically allocate resources based on predefined rules, regulations, cost constraints, and Service-Level Agreements (SLAs).
Operational ABBs
Virtualization Manager
Virtualization Manager (resource pooling enabler) emulates a physical infrastructure component that can be used and managed by the cloud consumer. Virtualization Manager acts as the façade and manager for physical infrastructural elements of SOCCI within the infrastructure.
Monitoring & Event Manager
Monitoring & Event Manager (measured service enabler) monitors the different services for specific events and trends of usage, detecting conflicts and failures within the infrastructure. They correlate to respective network and resource assets, ensuring compliance, reporting problems, as well as maintaining system recoverability and audit-ability for overall functional integrity of the infrastructure. Monitoring & Event Manager supports all infrastructure elements; i.e., storage, network, server, and facilities.
- Event monitoring is simply to indicate the need to propagate or clear an incident.
- Trend of the usage refers to different trending patterns, whether once-a-week, monthly, or yearly.
It also measures MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) and MTTR (Mean Time to Repair), with configurable alerts that are used to trigger notifications and escalations depending upon the severity levels.
Provisioning Manager
Provisioning Manager (rapid elasticity and on-demand self-service enabler) ensures that the right number of resources are allocated to address fluctuating demands as well as interacts with the virtualization and platform management component to provision and deploy services within the infrastructure to optimize infrastructure resources as well as satisfying the customer’s requirements for the requested cloud services.
Capacity & Performance Manager
Capacity & Performance Manager (resource pooling enabler) ensures that the optimal numbers of resources are available to satisfy the requests made by the Provisioning Manager to support the performance specified by the consumer. It measures and reports the discrete resources within a cloud environment to ensure optimal and committed performance levels. It also has the responsibility to manage performance of the tenants in accordance with the tenant’s SLAs and entitlements and track where resources are added/removed based on operating rules.
Configuration Manager
Configuration Manager provides the versioning and configuration support of devices (virtual and physical) within the infrastructure. It also supports the Provisioning and Monitoring & Event Managers within the infrastructure to ensure the overall functional integrity of the infrastructure.
ABB Summary
SOCCI Architecture Building Blocks depicts the SOCCI ABBs. The figure does not include expected base service-oriented computing ABBs (service registry for registration and publishing of service; service orchestrator/composer/choreographer or service event manager for subscription or publication of events), because the availability of SOA ABBs is implied here.
Here, we will only discuss the Management Building Blocks directly related to infrastructure that support SOCCI to enable its functionality. Therefore, some broadly used cloud and IT service management-related components, such as service catalog and compliance policy manager, are excluded from the list of cloud components.
The Operational ABBs (enablers), such as Virtualization Manager, have more focused attributes, whereas the Business ABB enablers usually support more attributes and enable more extensive activities for the users.
Additionally, operational building blocks are usually enabled by cost-effective technologies supplemented by service-centric approaches on an as-needed basis.
SOCCI Architecture Building Blocks (ABBs)