Architectural Vision of StratusLab v1.0

Here is the architectural vision for StratusLab v1.0 distribution. We use the term vision as a way to distinguish it from formal architectural description sometimes conveyed by for example UML conventions.

In the figure below, you can see several services and components, which compose the full StratusLab solution once deployed. Grey boxes show components and services developed and/or integrated by StratusLab with the specific purpose of providing a fully functional cloud service. The white boxes show runtime dependencies installed and configured by StratusLab's installation tools. The boxes with dotted line show external services not managed by StratusLab, but required for the connected services to function correctly. The configuration parameters to these external services are also managed by StratusLab's configuration system.

No attempt in this above figure is made to show the mapping of these services to physical resources, as this is largely left to the user during configuration time.

The following list gives a brief description of the different services and components identified above:

• Registration Web Application Provides on-site registration of users to the StratusLab service by collecting simple identification information (name, email address, etc.) as well as requiring that the user agrees to existing Acceptable Use and Security Policies. The information is kept in an LDAP server which is compatible with the StratusLab authentication services, allowing access via username/password pairs and X509 certificates.
• Marketplace Serves as a searchable registry for shared machine and disk images. It is at the center of the image handling mechanisms in the StratusLab distribution.
• Appliance Repository Repository that stores virtual appliances (machine and disk images).
• User Command-Line Client Provides means for remote instantiation of machine and disk images via OpenNebula, virtual machine instance life-cycle monitoring and image manipulation (creation, signing, upload to and registration in the Appliance Repository and Marketplace).
• Persistent Storage (iSCSI and/or NFS) Provides on-site management of persistent storage areas (`a la Amazon Elastic Block Store) allowing users to create disks of a given size, to launch a machine with the disks attached, and to persist the disks after their use, so that the disks are available for use by another machine instance.
• Web Monitor Provides live monitoring of the state of virtual images and physical hosts in the StratusLab cloud service.
• System Administrator Command-Line Client A set of utilities facilitating installation and configuration of StratusLab cloud service at a site. StratusLab configuration Manages configuration parameters of the StratusLab cloud and external services.
• StratusLab Quattor profiles A set of Quattor profiles for automated deployment and maintenance of StratusLab cloud service.
• OpenNebula OpenNebula is a virtual infrastructure manager with enhancements to address the requirements of the StratusLab project, such as integration with Ganglia, fault tolerance functionality, and virtual network improvements.
• OpenNebula Proxy A proxy service allowing authentication of users using range of credentials, including X509-based certificate and username/password, possibly based on LDAP service.
• StratusLab OpenNebula extensions and drivers Extend OpenNebula to allow a seamless integration of services and components developed by StratusLab, for example use of virtual appliances Marketplace IDs to refer to images to be instantiated, hooks to use on-site Persistent Storage for user appliances, and a quarantine strategy to aid forensic analysis.
• Claudia The Claudia platform is an advanced service management toolkit that allows service providers to dynamically control the service provisioning and scalability in an IaaS cloud. Claudia manages services as a whole, controlling the configuration of multiple VM components, virtual networks and storage support by optimizing their usage and by dynamically scaling up/down services applying elasticity rules, SLAs and business rules.