Architecting cloud‐enabled systems: a systematic survey of challenges and solutions

Abstract

SUMMARYThe literature on the challenges of and potential solutions to architecting cloud-based systems is rapidly growing but is scattered. It is important to systematically analyze and synthesize the existing research on architecting cloud-based software systems in order to build a cohesive body of knowledge of the reported challenges and solutions. We have systematically identified and reviewed 133 papers that report architecture-related challenges and solutions for cloud-based software systems. This paper reports the methodological details, findings, and implications of a systematic review that has enabled us to identify 44 unique categories of challenges and associated solutions for architecting cloud-based software systems. We assert that the identified challenges and solutions classified into the categories form a body of knowledge that can be leveraged for designing or evaluating software architectures for cloud-based systems. Our key conclusions are that a large number of primary studies focus on middleware services aimed at achieving scalability, performance, response time, and efficient resource optimization. Architecting cloud-based systems presents unique challenges as the systems to be designed range from pervasive embedded systems and enterprise applications to smart devices with Internet of Things. We also conclude that there is a huge potential of research on architecting cloud-based systems in areas related to green computing, energy efficient systems, mobile cloud computing, and Internet of Things.

Challenges of cloud computing use: A systematic literature review

“…Thus, Most technical issues are deeply embedded in much larger challenges of use of cloud computing. Some solutions are being developed as part of addressing some of aforementioned issues [27]. For instance, to overcome the challenges of privacy and protection, two studies [71,72] present an architecture adopting data location strategies, trusted cloud services, and trusted service vendors.…”

“…Multi-tenancy is a natural result of trying to achieve economic benefit in Cloud Computing by using virtualization and allowing resource sharing [62][63]. However, it is a technological issue in Cloud computing [27,33,45,61].…”

“…The purpose of a service supplier in this situation is to allocate and de-allocate resources from the cloud [23]. Nevertheless, it is not obvious how a service provider can achieve this goal [19,27,46].…”

INDIGO-DataCloud: a Platform to Facilitate Seamless Access to E-Infrastructures

“…Developments in this area can be found in the literature [31][32][33][34], where it becomes evident that there are many challenges to be addressed. Within INDIGO we focused (see Section 3.2) in the efficient sharing of resources among users following fair-share approaches (limiting the amount of resources that can be consumed by a user group), proper quota partitioning across different computing frameworks (like HPC and Cloud resources) or new Cloud computing execution models (like preemptible instances) as these are aspects that affect both users and resource providers.…”

TosKer: A synergy between TOSCA and Docker for orchestrating multicomponent applications

“…Cloud computing has revolutionized IT by allowing to run on‐demand distributed applications at a fraction of the cost, which was necessary just a few years ago . At the same time, the problem of automating the management of (complex) multicomponent applications over heterogeneous cloud infrastructures is receiving increasing attention . The OASIS standard TOSCA ( Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications ) and the Docker ecosystem are two emerging solutions trying to address this problem from different perspectives.…”