Monitoring a virtual network infrastructure: An laaS perspective

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) providers keep extending with new features the computing infrastructures they offer on a pay per use basis. In this paper we explore reasons and opportunities to include networking within such features, meeting the demand of users that need composite computing architectures similar to Grids. The introduction of networking capabilities within IaaSs would further increase the potential of this technology, and also foster an evolution of Grids towards a confluence, thus incorporating the experiences matured in this environment. Network monitoring emerges as a relevant feature of such virtual architectures, which must exhibit the distinguishing properties of toe IaaS paradigm: scalability, dynamic configuration, accounting. Monitoring tools developed with the same purpose in Grids provide useful insights on problems and solutions.