Appliance Management for Federated Cloud Environments

Cloud infrastructures provide compelling features for scientific and engineering applications. Federated clouds additionally promise improved scalability via access to a larger pool of resources and improved service availability through geographically distributed redundant servers. Effective use of federated clouds requires the creation of portable appliances and consistent appliance management techniques. The StratusLab Marketplace, a platform-agnostic appliance registry, facilitates appliance management in a federated environment. This paper describes the Marketplace design goals, implementation, and security concerns. It also covers the planned improvements based on our experience of running this service in production for more than two years.