CSR: Medium: Next-Generation Cloud Federation via a Geo-Distributed Datastore

今天的云计算系统为用户提供了对各种软件服务和资源的廉价且可扩展的访问，这些服务和资源可以加快软件和数据的开发、部署和管理。不同的云供应商通过定价、服务能力和可用性、规模和易用性等功能争夺这些用户。尽管有其优势，但单独使用任何单一云供应商都限制了用户的选择，导致供应商锁定和“数据重力”(即，将数据存储在用户以前存储数据的供应商处)，并使用户面临更大的故障和侵犯隐私的风险。该项目通过新的系统技术解决了这些限制，使用户能够安全而轻松地同时利用多个云基础设施。特别是，它为可扩展的数据管理(数据存储)层定义了一个新的软件抽象，称为DatGeo，它连接了地理上分布的云联盟。这项研究将使用DatGeo开发新的方法，以实现跨云的高效事务、数据分区和复制以及策略执行和调解。因此，DatGeo将使用户应用程序免受与单个云服务的低级别联合相关的复杂性，同时促进位置和隐私控制、更高的可靠性以及透明的跨云使用和便携性。为了能够广泛使用，该项目将使其研究成果和系统原型以开放源代码的形式提供。此外，该项目将产生新的课程材料和活动，吸引来自当地高中和以教学为重点的大学的不同学生，向他们介绍计算机科学，将其作为潜在的职业道路。

Today's cloud computing systems offer users inexpensive and scalable access to a wide range of software services and resources that expedite development, deployment, and management of software and data. Different cloud vendors compete for these users via pricing, service capability and availability, scale, and ease of use, among other features. Despite their advantages, using any single cloud vendor alone limits user choice, results in vendor lock-in and "data gravity" (i.e., the storing of data with the vendor at which the user has previously stored data), and exposes users to greater risk of failures and privacy violations.This project addresses these limitations with new systems technologies that enable users to leverage multiple cloud infrastructures at once, safely and easily. In particular, it defines a new software abstraction for the scalable data management (datastore) layer, called DatGeo, that bridges geographically distributed cloud federations. The research will use DatGeo to develop new approaches for efficient transactions, partitioning and replication of data, and policy enforcement and mediation, across clouds.As a result, DatGeo will shield user applications from the complexities associated with low-level federation of individual cloud services, while facilitating location and privacy control, increased reliability, and transparent cross-cloud use and portability. To enable wide spread use, the project will make its research artifacts and systems prototypes available as open source. In addition, the project will result in new course materials and activities that engage diverse students, new to computer science from local high-school and teaching-focused colleges, to introduce them to computer science as a potential career path.