Secure Virtual Layer Management in Clouds

Clouds are composed of enormous resources and are associated with attractive properties, e.g. scalability and resilience. Such properties are the result of Clouds dynamic nature. Cloud dynamism is desirable property for different reasons such as resilience, resource consolidation, and maintenance windows. However, such dynamism exposes many security and management concerns for Cloud providers as well as for Cloud users. For example how can Cloud providers assure users that: (a.) dependent applications running on different VMs (Virtual Machines) are hosted within physical proximity (performance reasons); (b.) mutually exclusive VMs are not hosted at the same physical server (e.g. availability and security reasons); and (c.) when migrating VMs the new allocated physical servers satisfy users application requirements and security and privacy criteria. In this paper we explore this important problem. We then propose a framework, which at this foundation stage focuses on providing secure environment for the management of Clouds' virtual layer. It also helps in establishing trust in Cloud's operational management. We also propose our planned implementation layout using Open Stack.

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