A Cloud Computing Service Level Agreement Framework with Negotiation and Secure Monitoring

Abstract

Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are essential to the service oriented business model of Cloud Computing. SLA Frameworks for cloud computing need methodology for negotiation and monitoring of service delivery. The success and acceptability of SLAs requires their trusted and secure monitoring. In this paper an SLA Framework which incorporates negotiation and secure monitoring mechanism involving a third-party is developed. A reference implementation of the Framework is carried out and used to develop a case study of video transcoding service by a provider hosted on a cloud. The case study illustrates the effectiveness of the developed framework in creating SLAs for complex scenarios encountered in cloud computing services. Workload characterization is used to characterise the SLA service parameters which are employed in defining services.