‘CloudCop’: Putting network-admin on cloud nine towards Cloud Computing for Network Monitoring

Computer Network Monitoring is an evergreen field of challenges. The recent advent of Cloud Computing, in the realm of `New Generation Networks', opens a whole new field of envisaging and implementing at least two of its aspects, namely `Software as a Service(SaaS)'and `Platform as a Service(PaaS)' in the field of Network Management(NM). In this paper, we present the design and implementation of a Network Monitoring Framework oriented towards Cloud Computing which we call `CloudCop'. The NM framework uses Web Services (WS) and Service Oriented Computing (SOC) to implement SaaS, while PaaS is provided by providing some of the features such as WS marshalling, integration, storage and persistence. Its data storage schema is made very generic to be applicable for other applications thus being in tune with the vision of SOC. It also employs a whole gamut of technologies such as WS, SOC, Mobile Agents(MA), Simple Network Management Protocol(SNMP) and is made scalable and robust enough to absorb new pieces such as Rule Engines and Ontology based Service Discovery which are planned in the next implementation phase. Therefore, this paper attempts to provide directions on the applicability of Cloud Computing for NM with a case study and implementation results paving the way for the users of such applications, network system administrators (network-admin)truly elated and therefore on `cloud nine'!