Cloud Orchestration Features: Are Tools Fit for Purpose?

Even though the cloud era has begun almost one decade ago, many problems of the first hour are still around. Vendor lock-in and poor tool support hinder users from taking full advantage of main cloud features: dynamic and scale. This has given rise to tools that target the seamless management and orchestration of cloud applications. All these tools promise similar capabilities and are barely distinguishable what makes it hard to select the right tool. In this paper, we objectively investigate required and desired features of such tools and give a definition of them. We then select three open-source tools (Brooklyn, Cloudify, Stratos) and compare them according to the features they support using our experience gained from deploying and operating a standard three-tier application. This exercise leads to a fine-grained feature list that enables the comparison of such tools based on objective criteria as well as a rating of three popular cloud orchestration tools. In addition, it leads to the insight that the tools are on the right track, but that further development and particularly research is necessary to satisfy all demands.