Towards Self-Manageable Cloud Services

Cloud computing represents a promising computing paradigm, where computational power is provided as a utility. An important characteristic of Cloud computing, other than in similar paradigms like Grid or HPC computing, is the provision of non-functional guarantees to users. Thereby, applications can be executed considering predefined execution time, price, security or privacy standards, which are guaranteed in real time in form of Service Level Agreements (SLAs). However, due to changing components, workload, external conditions, hardware, and software failures, established SLAs may be violated. Thus, frequent user interactions with the system, which are usually necessary in case of failures, might turn out to be an obstacle for the success of Cloud computing. In this paper we discuss self-manageable Cloud services. In case of failures, environmental changes, and similar, services manage themselves automatically following the principles of autonomic computing. Based on the life cycle of a self-manageable Cloud service we derive a resource submission taxonomy. Furthermore, we present an architecture for the implementation of self-manageable Cloud services. Finally, we discuss the application of autonomic computing to Cloud services based on service mediation and negotiation bootstrapping case study.