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广泛的软件服务和资源的廉价和可扩展的访问，从而加快了软件和数据的开发、部署和管理。不同的云供应商通过价格、服务能力和可用性、规模和易用性等特性来争夺这些用户。尽管有这些优势，但单独使用任何一个云供应商限制了用户的选择，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那里），并使用户面临更大的故障和隐私侵犯风险。该项目通过新的系统技术解决了这些限制，使用户能够同时安全、轻松地利用多个云基础设施。特别地，它为可伸缩数据管理（数据存储）层定义了一个新的软件抽象，称为DatGeo，用于连接地理上分布式的云联盟。该研究将使用DatGeo开发新的方法，以实现高效的事务、数据分区和复制，以及跨云的策略执行和中介。因此，DatGeo将保护用户应用程序免受与单个云服务的低级联合相关的复杂性，同时促进位置和隐私控制，提高可靠性，透明的跨云使用和可移植性。为了使广泛使用成为可能，该项目将使其研究工件和系统原型作为开放源代码可用。此外，该项目将产生新的课程材料和活动，吸引不同的学生，来自当地高中和教学重点大学的计算机科学新手，向他们介绍计算机科学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.