Automating Application Deployment in Infrastructure Clouds

Cloud computing systems are becoming an important platform for distributed applications in science and engineering. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) clouds provide the capability to provision virtual machines (VMs) on demand with a specific configuration of hardware resources, but they do not provide functionality for managing resources once they are provisioned. In order for such clouds to be used effectively, tools need to be developed that can help users to deploy their applications in the cloud. In this paper we describe a system we have developed to provision, configure, and manage virtual machine deployments in the cloud. We also describe our experiences using the system to provision resources for scientific workflow applications, and identify areas for further research.