On providing real-time guarantees in cloud-based platforms

Cloud technologies are gaining more and more attentions in recent years. Cloud-based service brings benefits in cost, energy efficiency, sharing of resources, increased flexibility, adaptability and evolvability. However, there are a number of associated challenges that need to be properly addressed before applying the cloud technique generally in industries. Providing efficient and predictable computation and communication is one of the important challenges, since many industrial systems (e.g. a control system) have specific timing requirements. Our current work thus focuses on guaranteeing the predictability of a cloud-based service. Virtualization, as one of the key technologies in Cloud Computing, is used to abstract details of resources away from end-services which simplifies the resource sharing. It thus improves the resource utilization and saves budget for end-users. In this preliminary work, we have implemented a distributed system using virtualization techniques (including virtual machines and virtual switches). Additionally, we generate a number of experiments to investigate how QoS policies can help us to provide real-time communication guarantees.