A Framework for managing Quality of Service in Cloud Computing through Service Level Agreements

Cloud providers only offer a limited set of non-negotiable service levels to their customers. Usually these service levels are expressed as guarantees for availability of a virtualised infrastructure providing a certain performance when using it with. Our analysis shows two major fields to be worked on for improving customer experience: (i) each provider uses its own proprietary technology towards the customer for managing SLAs throughout their life-cycles, (ii) there is neither a common set of terms to describe Cloud customers' requirements regarding the Cloud services requested, nor there is a common set of terms to describe the Quality of Service (QoS) of the Cloud providers' offerings. The focus of the thesis is (i) on Standard technology for negotiating and creating SLAs and (ii) the common terms and metrics describing providers' offerings and customers' requirements. These SLAs are both binding and monitorable agreements between customer and provider and the basis for QoS-aware resource management on the side of the provider. Customers may use standards compliant agreement templates with the providers' offerings to select suitable providers for starting the negotiation.