Cloud Orchestration at the Level of Application

Aim and goal

The overall objective of the COLA (Cloud Orchestration at the Level of Applications) project is to define a generic pluggable framework, called MiCADO (Microservices-based Cloud Application-level Dynamic Orchestrator) that supports optimal and secure deployment and run-time orchestration of cloud applications.

Challenge

Typical industry and public sector applications require resource scalability and efficient resource utilisation in order to serve a variable number of customers with dynamic resource demands, and to suitably optimise resource consumption and costs. Cloud computing has the potential to fulfil these requirements. In order to support the development of a large number of private and public sector applications that are capable utilising the dynamic and scalable nature of IaaS clouds, advanced tools are required that support application developers

Solution

The project will design and implement, building on existing solutions where and as appropriate, a generic set of tools that provides dynamic and automated resource scalability on clouds for widely identified application patterns and scenarios. Generic application patterns will be identified and described that will further support application developers. The MiCADO framework will be able connect to multiple cloud middleware (e.g. EC2, CloudSigma, OpenStack, OpenNebula, etc.) or generic cloud access layers (e.g. CloudBroker Platform) via well-defined standardised interfaces to avoid dependence on one particular cloud technology.

Effect

COLA will provide the missing link between existing non cloud aware applications and the dynamic capabilities of IaaS Clouds in the form of a generic framework where multiple technology implementations can be plugged-in and applied on demand.