Holistic Modeling and Performance Evaluation for Converged Network-Cloud Service Provisioning

The crucial role that computer networks play in Cloud computing requires a holistic vision of both networking and computing resources that leads to a convergence of network and Cloud service provisioning. Performance evaluation on converged network-Cloud service provisioning faces some new challenges that are brought in by key features of Cloud computing, such as resource virtualization and service-orientation. In order to address the challenges, we explored application of network calculus theory in analyzing network-Cloud service performance by proposing a novel profile-based modeling approach. In this paper we further extend this approach by particularly considering the impact of data transform between networking and computing systems in network-Cloud service provisioning, thus achieving holistic modeling and analysis on end-to-end service performance across the network and Cloud domains. The developed analytic method is general and applicable to a wide variety of network-Cloud services. The results obtained in this paper also provide useful guidelines for federated management of networking and computing resources for achieving service performance guarantees.