WICSA/ECSA 2009 “Virtualization, Cloud Computing and Software Architecture" BoF Proposal

Paul Brebner, NICTA

Anna Liu, UNSW

We propose a WICSA 2009 BOF session on “Virtualization, Cloud Computing, and Software Architecture” which will look broadly at the following main areas (suggested discussion starter questions).

 (1) What is virtualization/cloud computing?

• What is virtualization?
• What is cloud computing?
• What’s the connection between virtualization and cloud computing? What do they share in common? What’s different? Are there any necessary dependencies?
• What can be virtualized? What can’t be? What could be? What shouldn’t be?

(2) What is relevance of virtualization/clouds to Software Architecture?

• How does virtualization/cloud any impact the architecture of software? What specifically? What changes does virtualization/clouds require for software architecting? What are the benefits, issues?
• How (well) does virtualization work with different architectural styles (such as SOA, Grid, event-based systems, etc)?
• What architectural styles do/don’t work well on cloud computing? (E.g. Amazon EC2). What changes or additions are required to cloud computing architecture in order to address this?
• What’s “best practice” for architecting systems with significant virtualization?
• How should new applications be architected for virtualization/clouds?
• Legacy applications?
• Hybrid applications (some hosting internal to organisation, some external)
• What methods, frameworks, standards, patterns, tool support etc is available/needed?
• How do you determine the costs and benefits of re-architecting for virtualization/clouds?
• What impacts (positive and negative) does virtualization have on architectural quality attributes?

(3) What is the Software Architecture of virtualization/clouds?

• What characterises the software architecture of virtualization/clouds?
• Are there common architectural styles for virtualization/clouds?
• Are there any architecturally significant similarities and differences between different types and vendors virtualization products?
• What standards exist or are under development for virtualization/clouds? What is there purposes, scope, and uptake?
• How do you evaluate and select a virtualization/cloud solution against architectural goals?
• What deficiencies are there in current virtualization/cloud infrastructures? For example, how extensive and important is support for load-balancing, automatic scaling (instance start/stop), monitoring and management, etc.
• How important is web-service based management of virtualization/cloud?
• Is virtualization and cloud computing the answer to all scalability/performance issues?
• What performance and scalability issues does it potentially introduce?
• What problems/solutions are there for virtualization/cloud on extremely heterogeneous resources (e.g. different speed CPUs).
• Is the view that “just throw more virtual instances at it” to solve performance/scalability problems hopelessly naïve?
• Are there any reliable sources of empirical evidence for virtualization and cloud performance and scalability?

(4) Looking back, experiences, and looking forward

• What’s new/old about virtualization/cloud? What can be traced back to previous successes (or failures!), and what lessons are transferable to current software architectures and applications?
• What experiences have people had with using virtualization/cloud and what lessons have they learnt from architectural perspectives?
• What research has been done, and what research is needed at the intersection of software architecture and virtualization/cloud?