2014 IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing

Inter-Cloud Architecture and Media Cloud Storage

Design Considerations
Mohammad Aazam, Eui-Nam Huh
Computer Engineering Department
Kyung Hee University,
Suwon, South Korea
[email protected], [email protected]

Abstract—The rapid increase in digital content, specially This paper discusses about the architecture of Inter-Cloud
multimedia, calls now for standardization of Media Cloud and computing and Media Cloud, along with the key challenges
Inter-Cloud computing, for better provisioning of services. Inter- faced in Inter-cloud computing and Media Cloud. We also
Cloud computing faces some key challenges in terms of handling discuss some of the solutions and our already done work.
multimedia, which are discussed in this paper along with our
research status towards their solutions. We also present Inter- II. INTER-CLOUD AND MEDIA CLOUD COMMUNICATION
Cloud basic architecture and Media Cloud storage design
considerations. Some key findings on storage heterogeneity are Communication of two or more clouds with each other is
also part of this paper. known as Inter-cloud computing. When there are many clouds
existing with multimedia content, clouds should be able to
Index Terms—Inter-cloud computing; media cloud; cloud communicate with each other, creating inter-cloud computing
federation; cloud storage. scenario. This is also important to meet the increasing demands
as diverse type of requirements can be made by the user, which
I. INTRODUCTION may not be offered by one single cloud. To meet the
Digital media has convincingly surpassed traditional media, requirement, one cloud has to request another cloud or multiple
as a result of which this trend makes big and possibly long- clouds. Other than this, cloud should be able to discover
term changes to the contents being exchanged over the Internet. services available elsewhere. This inter-cloud computing will
The global Internet video traffic had surpassed global peer-to- create a ‘Cloud of Clouds’ (CoC), being able to communicate
peer (P2P) traffic in 2010 [1]. Excluding the amount of video the data that is not stored by its datacenters directly. For this,
exchanged through P2P file sharing, at the time being, Internet cloud interoperability must be in a standardized way.
video is 40 percent of consumer Internet traffic. By 2012, it Standardized way of service level agreement (SLA) must be
was over 50 percent and will reach 62 percent by the end of made part of it. Inter-cloud Protocol, with the support of 1-to-1,
2015. If all forms of video are counted, the number will be 1-to-many, and many-to-many cloud to cloud communication
approximately 90 percent by 2015 [1]. To meet the great and messaging must exist. Some of the basics on inter-cloud
opportunities and challenges coming along with media are presented in [3]. To start with, first the entities are to be
revolution, sophisticated technology and better facilities with defined.
more powerful capabilities have become the most urgent
demands. A. Inter-Cloud Communication Entities
Since different types of digital media contents can be Inter-Cloud communication involves four entities, which
produced and disseminated across different networks, so a are explained below.
standard mechanism is required to allow interoperability 1). Cloud service provider
between clouds and transcoding of media contents [2]. Purpose Cloud Service Provider provides cloud services to the
of media cloud is to address this problem and to allow users Cloud Service Customer, Cloud Service Partner, and other
constitute a cloud and manage media content transparently, Cloud Service Providers. Provider may be operating from
even if it is located outside the user’s domain. For service within the data center, outside, or both. Cloud Service Provider
discovery and creating more services, communication between has the roles of: cloud service administrator, cloud service
two or more clouds becomes necessary. This is called Inter- manager, business manager, and security & risk manager.
cloud computing. But with Inter-cloud computing, handling The sub-roles of cloud service provider include: inter-cloud
media contents will be an issue. Handling multimedia does not provider, deployment manager, and customer support & care
only mean transcoding of different media contents into representative.
interoperable form, but also to be able to communicate 2). Cloud service customer
multimedia according to the quality and type of content the Cloud Service Customer in that entity which uses cloud
user wants. services and has a business relationship with the Cloud Service
Provider. The roles of Cloud Service Customer are: cloud

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DOI 10.1109/CLOUD.2014.151
Authorized licensed use limited to: Politecnico di Milano. Downloaded on May 26,2025 at 08:49:42 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
service user, customer cloud service administrator, customer according to customer's needs, with respect to specified SLA
business manager, and customer cloud service integrator. and providing with a uniform interface to manage and observe
3). Cloud service partner the deployed services. Shown in figure 1, Cloud Broker
Cloud service partner is kind of a third party which includes application programming interfaces (APIs) and a
provides auxiliary roles, which are beyond the scope of cloud standard abstract API, which is used to manage cloud resources
service provider and cloud service customer. Cloud service from different cloud providers. Cloud Broker holds another
partner has the roles of Cloud Developer, Auditor, and Cloud abstract API for the negotiation of cloud service facilities with
Broker. the customer.
In a broad sense, Cloud Developer develops services for This access of services can be direct, between cloud service
other entities, like Cloud Service Customer and Cloud Service customer and cloud service provider(s). In that case, the
Provider. Among the roles, Cloud Developer performs the interoperability and transcoding related things are handled by
tasks of designing, developing, testing, and maintaining the the customer itself. Figure 1 shows the architecture of broker
cloud service. Among the sub-roles, Cloud Developer and both of the communication scenarios in detail.
performs as Service Integrator and Service Component
Developer.
Cloud Auditor performs the audit of the provision and use
of cloud services. Since service provider and service customer
are separate entities, so the service quality, usage behavior, and
conformance to SLA, all this has to be audited by the third
party having the role of Auditor.
Cloud Broker offers business and relationship services to
Cloud Service Customers to evaluate and select Cloud Service
Providers, according to their needs. Negotiating between
provider and customer is among the main roles of Cloud
Broker, other than interoperability operations.
4). Cloud service carrier
Cloud carrier is an intermediary that provides connectivity
and transport of cloud services, from cloud providers to cloud
customers. With the role of Cloud network provider it provides
network connectivity and related services. It may operate
within the date center, outside of it, or both. It provides
network connectivity, provides other network related services,
and manages the services.

B. Inter-cloud Topology Elements

Inter-cloud computing involves three basic entities, which Figure 1: Inter-cloud broker architecture and communication scenarios.
are explained in this part of the article.
1) Inter-cloud Exchanges D. Inter-cloud computing protocols
Inter-cloud Exchanges are those entities which are capable For different types of communications, different Inter-
of introducing attributes of cloud environment for inter-cloud cloud protocols are used [4] [5]. According to their type and
computing. extent of use, they are discussed here.
2) Inter-cloud Root 1) Basic communication
Inter-cloud Root contains services like, Naming Authority, "Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) for
Directory Services, Trust Authority, etc. it is physically not a basic communication, transport, and using Semantic Web
single entity, but a DNS-like global replicating and hierarchical techniques such as Resource Description Framework (RDF) to
system. It may also act as broker. specify resources." [4]. XMPP is an eXtensible Markup
3) Inter-cloud Gateway Language (XML) based communications protocol, for
It is a router that implements Inter-cloud protocols and message-oriented middleware. XMPP is for near real-time
allows Inter-cloud interoperability. It provides mechanism for instant messaging (IM), presence information, and contact list
supporting the entire profile of Inter-cloud protocols and maintenance. As it is 'extensible', it has also been used for
standards. VoIP signaling, gaming, videos, file transfer, publish-subscribe
systems, and Internet of Things applications, such as the smart
C. Inter-cloud scenarios grid and social networking services. RDF is a ‘metadata’ data
Communication between cloud service customer and cloud model, which is used as a general method for conceptual
service provider(s) can take place in two ways: (a). with broker description or modeling of information, implemented in web
and (b). without broker. The main purpose of the broker is resources using various syntax notations and data serialization
assisting the customer to find the best provider and the service, formats.

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 2) Services framework streamed media, Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) is
On top of the base XMPP, one of its extensions, XEP-0244, used. RTSP is responsible for establishing and maintaining
provides a services framework for M2M communications, sessions between two endpoints, while streaming of content is
named IO Data. XEP-0244 is designed for sending messages performed by Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) along with
from one computer to another, providing a transport for remote Real Time Control Protocol (RTCP), which is responsible for
service invocation. It also overcomes the problems with SOAP providing statistics and control information to RTP flows.
and REST.
3) Authentication and encryption III. INTER-CLOUD COMPUTING CHALLENGES
Transport Layer Security (TLS) is used for communication This section presents the key challenges faced by Inter-
security over the Internet. Simple Authentication and Security Cloud computing.
Layer (SASL) is used for authentication purpose. Streams are
first secured with TLS, before completing the authentication 1) Heterogeneous media contents and media transcoding
through SASL. SASL authenticates a stream by means of an Very diverse types of services are available in the media
XMPP-specific profile of the protocol. SASL adds cloud arena, making transcoding and content presentation an
authentication support in a generalized way to connection- area of concern. Services like, Video on Demand (VoD), IPTV,
based protocols. Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) Voice over IP (VoIP), Time Shifted Television (TSTV), Pause
provides authentication services for cloud federation scenario, Live Television (PLTV), Remote Storage Digital Video
but it is still not fully supported in XMPP-specific profiles. Recorder (RSDVR), Network Personal Video Recorder
4) Identity and access management (nPVR), and the increasing social media content requires a lot
SAML is particularly used for authentication and of effort in this regard.
authorization between identity provider and service provider. A 2) Heterogeneous QoS requirements and QoS
significance SAML has in this regard is web browser single provisioning mechanisms
sign-on (SSO) mechanism. SSO provides access control of Depending upon the access network, condition of core
multiple independent but related software systems. Its counter network, the requesting device, user’s needs, and type of
action is single sign-off, which disallows access to multiple service, heterogeneous QoS requirements can be made.
services with one action at once, hence saving time and effort. Dynamic QoS provisioning schemes needs to be implemented
eXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML) is in this regard. We have worked on it in detail in our study
also used for access control. It evaluates access requests presented in [6].
according to the rules already defined in policies. XACML is 3) Data/media sanitization
more useful in inter-cloud scenarios, where it provides When a client requests for storage space from the cloud, it
common terminology and interoperability between access does not mean that ‘any’ type of data can now be stored. Data
control implementations by multiple service providers or has to be filtered. Some of the cloud storage service providers
vendors. do not allow some specific type of data to be stored, like
5) Exchange service directory pornographic material. One of such services is Microsoft
RDF is used for resource allocation, such as, storage and SkyDrive.
processing, in inter-cloud environment, while SPARQL 4) Security and trust model
Protocol and RDF Query Language (SPARQL) is a Outsourced data poses new security risks in terms of
query/matching service for RDF. SPARQL can retrieve and correctness and privacy of the data in cloud [8]. When we talk
manipulate data in RDF format. When a request is made, it about media cloud, not only data service will be requested by
invokes a SPARQL query over an XMPP connection to the the user, but also, storage service would also be requested.
Inter-cloud Root, to apply the constraints and preferences to the Storing contents, which may have some sensitive or private
computing semantics catalog, where it is determined whether information, poses risks to the customers. Some of the details
the service description on another cloud are according to the are presented in our work in [7] and [9].
requirements of the first cloud. 5) Heterogeneous Internet Protocols
6) Media related communication IPv4 address space has exhausted. Migration towards IPv6
H.264/MPEG4 (Motion Picture Experts Group) or also has formally been expedited. Both of these versions of IP are
known as Advanced Video Coding (AVC), is one the most not directly interoperable. Since this complete migration is
commonly used coding scheme for high quality video going to take some time, may be a decade [10], so both the
recording, compression, and distribution. Because of its Block versions of IP are made to interoperate though some means.
Motion Compensation (BMC) feature, it is also the most Tunneling is the viable solution in hand, but it has its own
widely used encoding scheme by Internet streaming video overhead. We have worked extensively on this and presented
services, like, YouTube, Vimeo, iTunes, etc. and also in web- our findings in [10].
based softwares, like, Adobe Flash Player and Microsoft 6) Heterogeneous media storage technologies
Silverlight. H.264 supports both lossy and loss-less Storage is an important part. Multimedia content requires a
compressions, so it is suited for Internet streaming services, in lot of space. Efficiency in storage and searching is an important
which, streaming quality can be dynamically decided based on aspect media cloud should have. Different storage technologies
the condition of the network or user’s link. For the delivery of available are Network Attached Storage (NAS), Direct

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Attached Storage (DAS), Fiber Channel (FC), Fiber Channel
over IP (FCIP), Internet Fiber Channel Protocol (iFCP),
Content Addressed Storage (CAS) or Fixed Content Storage
(FCS), and Internet Small Computer Systems Interface
(iSCSI). Communication between clouds creates inefficiency
when different storage technologies are provided by the service
providers. The difference in storage space efficiency of some
of the noteworthy cloud storage services is presented in section
IV.
IV. CURRENT RESEARCH STATUS
Figure 3: Storage size efficiency on (a) 50MB and (b) 100MB data sets.
Storage of multimedia content plays a very vital role in this
regard. Storage technology has to be standardized to ensure V. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
efficiency of coding-decoding and storage space. In a study we
conducted on media cloud storage, it was evaluated that This study focuses on the importance of standardization of
different cloud storage services use different storage schemes Inter-cloud and Media Cloud. We have discussed the
which affect the size of stored data, its presentation, and architecture of Inter-Cloud computing and storage related
quality. This study was done extensively on various design considerations for Media Cloud. Some of the most
parameters, but only few of most relevant results are presented prominent issues and their solutions are also presented here and
in this section. Six noteworthy cloud storage services, namely, we have discussed the current status of our research as well.
Dropbox, GoogleDrive, Amazon CloudDrive, SugarSync, Currently, we are working on Media Cloud storage and its
Microsoft SkyDrive, and Box were selected for this part of standardization. Some of the initial results are presented here,
study. Results were gathered in Korea as well as in Pakistan, which will be extended in future.
on same machine and type of access network. A lot depends ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research was supported by the MSIP (Ministry of Science,
upon the network condition, user’s trend of usage on weekdays
ICT&Future Planning), Korea, under the ITRC (Information
and weekends, and the current load on storage server, when the Technology Research Center) support program (NIPA-2014(H0301-
results are being gathered. So, to ensure the reliability of 14-1020)) supervised by the NIPA (National IT Industry Promotion
results, we gathered multiple samples during different times of Agency). The corresponding author is Prof. Eui-Nam Huh.
the day, on weekdays as well as weekends. In both the KEY REFERENCES
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