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Performance and security of cloud-based services

Cloud infrastructures must accommodate changing demands for different types of processing with heterogeneous workloads and time constraints. In a similar context, dynamic management of virtualized application environments is becoming very important to exploit computing resources, especially with recent virtualization capabilities that allow live sessions to be moved transparently between servers. Moreover, from the users viewpoint, the security of the data outsourced to cloud-based services might be at risk, because cloud providers have complete access on them. In this scenario, we explore the following research areas.

  • Live Migration algorithms. We propose novel management algorithms to decide about reallocations of virtual machines in a cloud context characterized by large numbers of hosts. The novel algorithms identify just the real critical instances and take decisions without recurring to typical thresholds. Moreover, they consider load trend behavior of the resources instead of instantaneous or average measures. Preliminary results seem to show that the proposed algorithms are truly selective and robust even in variable contexts, thus reducing system instability and limit migrations when really necessary.
  • Monitoring of cloud infrastructures. We analyze the monitoring infrastructures behind current virtualization systems that support cloud computing. Our goal is to find out under which operating conditions (workload, hardware and software configuration) the information obtained from these monitoring infrastructures tools is comparable to operating system level resource measures (CPU, disk, network, memory). We also investigate the correlations among host-based and virtual machine-based performance measurements.
  • Security for cloud services. We analyze the risks deriving from users data outsourcing to cloud services, and we propose architectural solutions to guarantee confidentiality, integrity and availability of users data in such context. We also study the performance and the feasibility of the proposed solutions both in emulated and in real cloud scenarios.

People

Selected Papers

  • Luca Ferretti, Michele Colajanni, Mirco Marchetti, "Distributed, concurrent, and independent access to encrypted cloud databases", To appear on IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems
  • Mauro Andreolini, Michele Colajanni, Marcello Pietri, Stefania Tosi, Adaptive, scalable and reliable monitoring of big data on clouds, Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing.
  • Mauro Andreolini, Marcello Pietri, Stefania Tosi, Andrea Balboni, "Monitoring Large Cloud-Based Systems", Proc. of the International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science (CLOSER2014), Barcelona, Spain, 3-5 April 2014 (Candidate for the Best Paper award).
  • Mauro Andreolini, Sara Casolari, Marcello Pietri, Stefania Tosi, Adaptive, Dynamic, and Resilient Systems, chapter "Resilient and Adaptive Networked Systems".
    Auerbach Publications, ISBN: 1439868484 ISBN-13: 9781439868485. November 2013.
  • Mauro Andreolini, Michele Colajanni, Marcello Pietri, Stefania Tosi, "Real-Time Adaptive Algorithm for Resource Monitoring", Proc. of the International Conference on Network and Service Management (CNSM2013), Zurich, Switzerland, October 14-18 2013.
  • Luca Ferretti, Fabio Pierazzi, Michele Colajanni, Mirco Marchetti, "Security and confidentiality solutions for public cloud database services", Proc. of the 7th International Conference on Emerging Security Information, Systems and Technologies, Barcellona, Spain, August 2013.
  • Luca Ferretti, Michele Colajanni, Mirco Marchetti, Adriano Enrico Scaruffi, "Transparent access on encrypted data distributed over multiple cloud infrastructures", Proc. of the 4th International Conference on Cloud Computing, GRIDs, and Virtualization , Valencia, Spain, May-June 2013.
  • Luca Ferretti, Fabio Pierazzi, Michele Colajanni, Mirco Marchetti, "Performance evaluation of adaptive encryption methods for cloud database as a service", 4th Workshop of the Italian group on Quantitative Methods in Informatics (INFQ 2013), Sorrento, Italy, June 2013.
  • Mauro Andreolini, Michele Colajanni, Marcello Pietri, Stefania Tosi, "Adaptive Data Gathering for Enhancing Scalability in Large Scale Systems", InfQ 2013 - 4th Workshop of the Italian group on Quantitative Methods in Informatics, Sorrento (NA), June 2013.
  • Mauro Andreolini, Michele Colajanni, Marcello Pietri, "A Scalable Architecture for Real-Time Monitoring of Large Information Systems", Proc. of. the International Symposium on Network Cloud Computing and Applications (NCCA2012), London, UK, December 2012.
  • Luca Ferretti, Michele Colajanni, Mirco Marchetti, "Supporting security and consistency for cloud database", Proc. of the 4th International Symposium on Cyberspace Safety and Security (CSS 2012), Springer, Melbourne, Australia, December 2012.
  • Mauro Andreolini, Michele Colajanni, Marcello Pietri and Alessandro Guido, "A scalable and robust architecture for monitoring large scale systems", InfQ Workshop 2012, IMT Institute for Advanced Studies Lucca, Italy, July 2012.
  • Mauro Andreolini, Michele Colajanni, Stefania Tosi, "A software architecture for the analysis of large sets of data streams in cloud infrastructures", Proc. of the IEEE International Conference on Computer and Information Technology (CIT2011), Cyprus, August 31-September 02, 2011.
  • Riccardo Lancellotti, Mauro Andreolini, Claudia Canali, Michele Colajanni, "Dynamic request management algorithms for Web-based services in cloud computing", Proc. of the IEEE Computer Software and Application Conference (COMPSAC 11) , Munich Germany, July 2011
  • M. Andreolini, M. Colajanni, R. Lancellotti, "Assessing the overhead and scalability of system monitors for large data centers", Proc. of 1st International Workshop on Cloud Computing Platforms (CLOUDCP2011, joint with EUROSYS2011), Salzburg, Austria, Apr. 2011
  • M. Andreolini, S. Casolari, S. Tosi, "A hierarchical architecture for on-line control of private cloud-based systems", Proc. of 10th World Wide Web Internet Conference (WWWCONF2010), Timisoara, Romania, Oct. 2010 (Best paper award)
  • G. Giustini, M. Andreolini, M. Colajanni, "Open source live distributions for Computer Forensics", book chapter in Open Source Software for Digital Forensics (Ed. Ernesto Damiani), Springer series, Jan. 2010
  • M. Andreolini, S. Casolari, M. Colajanni, M. Messori, "Dynamic load management of virtual machines in a cloud architecture", Proc of First Int. Conference on Cloud Computing (ICST CLOUDCOMP2009), Munich, Germany, Oct. 2009

  • M. Andreolini, R. Lancellotti, "A flexible and robust lookup algorithm for P2P systems" Proc. of the 23rd IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS 2009) (DPDNS2009), Rome, Italy, May 2009
  • S. Casolari, M. Andreolini, M. Colajanni,"Runtime prediction models for Web-based system resources", IEEE/ACM 16th Int. Symposium on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems (MASCOTS 2008), Baltimore, MA, Sept. 2008
  • M. Andreolini, Sara Casolari, M. Colajanni,"Trend-based load balancer for multi-tier distributed systems", Proc. of the 15th IEEE International Symposium on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Computer and Telecomunication Systems (IEEE MASCOTS 2007)
  • M. Andreolini, S. Casolari, M. Colajanni, M. Marchetti,"Dynamic load balancing for network intrusionsion detection systems based on distributed architectures", Proc. of the 6th IEEE International Symposium on Network Computing and Applications (IEEE NCA 2007), Cambridge, MA, July 2007
  • M. Andreolini, C. Canali, R. Lancellotti, "Impact of request dispatching granularity in geographically distributed Web systems", Proc. of the 6th IEEE International Symposium on Network Computing and Applications (IEEE NCA 2007), Cambridge, MA, July 2007
  • M. Andreolini, S. Casolari, M. Colajanni, M. Messori, "Dynamic load management of virtual machines in a cloud architecture",Proc. of the First International Conference on Cloud Computing (CLOUDCOMP 2009), Munich, Germany, October 19-21, 2009.