Feature-Based Configuration of Vendor-Independent Deployments on IaaS

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is commonly used to deploy distributed systems like Web applications. For every component of a distributed system, IaaS consumers need to select, configure, and deploy a virtual machine (VM), the image to run on the VM, and software to install on the image. These tasks involve multiple decisions, require complex and error-prone manual effort, and may occur unexpectedly. To deal with these challenges, we present a feature-based configuration and vendor-independent deployment approach. An IaaS deployment model allows to describe and automatically perform the distributed system deployment vendor-independently. We use service feature modeling to support the decisions required for configuration. These modeling approaches are combined in a feature-based configuration and deployment process. It can be performed automatically and can be triggered in reaction to unexpected events. We present a proof-of-concept implementation that we use to perform a use case about deploying the Web application of the Barcoo service, showing the approach´s applicability.