A policy-based cloud broker for the VCL platform

Managing and delivering virtualised cloud-based services in systems like the virtual computing lab (VCL) is an open challenge. Current research is focused on enhancing specific components like service discovery, composition and monitoring and there is no holistic view of what would constitute a lifecycle of virtualised services delivered on a cloud environment. We have developed a policy-based integrated framework for automating acquisition and consumption of cloud services. This framework divides the cloud service lifecycle into five phases: requirements, discovery, negotiation, composition, and consumption. We have also developed a cloud broker tool to automatically discover, negotiate and reserve images from the VCL platform. It was developed using web technologies and is built upon our service lifecycle framework. This paper describes our methodology and the tool as implemented on the VCL platform.