Service Level Agreements Compliance Checking in the Cloud Computing: Architectural Pattern, Prototype, and Validation

Cloud Computing raises several issues about Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Virtualization. It also raises questions related to services contractualization, contracts management and compliance checking. These contracts (i.e., Service Level Agreements) apply to the target systems and services. Issues and solutions related to contracts compliance checking are also referred to as Service Level Checking (SLC). Implementing a contracts compliance checking for the Cloud Computing requires to introduce an innovative architectural pattern. This architectural pattern must separate concerns regarding the probes, the monitoring information collection and the contracts compliance checking itself. The architectural pattern proposed involves the (data) mediation approach. It has been implemented and the corresponding prototype has been validated in the context of the European CELTIC Servery cooperative research project. In this paper, we present our prototype and give a detailed explanation of the validation done in this project.