A Framework and Middleware for Application-Level Cloud Bursting on Top of Infrastructure-as-a-Service Clouds

A core idea of cloud computing is elasticity, i.e., enabling applications to adapt to varying load by dynamically acquiring and releasing cloud resources. One concrete realization is cloud bursting, which is the migration of applications or parts of applications running in a private cloud to a public cloud to cover load spikes. Actually building a cloud bursting enabled application is not trivial. In this paper, we introduce a reference model and middleware realization for Cloud bursting, thus enabling elastic applications to run across the boundaries of different Cloud infrastructures. In particular, we extend our previous work on application-level elasticity in single clouds to multiple clouds, and apply it to implement an hybrid cloud model that combines good utilization of a private cloud with the unlimited scalability of a public cloud. By means of an experimental evaluation we show the feasibility of the approach and the benefits of adopting Cloud bursting in hybrid cloud models.