Enhancing service maintainability by monitoring and auditing SLA in cloud computing

Enforcing Service Level Agreements (SLA) on service provisioning is a challenge in cloud computing environments. This paper proposes an architecture for multiparty (provider and client) auditing in cloud computing to identify SLA deviations. The architecture uses inspectors (software agents) and an independent auditor (third party) to collect SLA metrics from these parties. Privacy is preserved by using the separation of duties for all associated entities (inspectors and auditors). Additionally, service computing surges are automatically detected and handled using machine learning, avoiding performance bottlenecks and misinterpretation of measured SLA items. Thus, this paper improves service maintainability by avoiding service design changes when the service faces performance issues.