Automated Configuration of Legacy Applications in the Cloud

Abstract

Current solutions for managing distributed applications in the cloud, typically covered by PaaS (Platform as a Service) offers, remain domain specific and are only partially automated. In this context, the task consisting in automatically configuring distributed applications is still a difficult issue. In this paper, we present an application architectural model and a self-configuration protocol that automates the deployment of legacy distributed applications. Our protocol is decentralized and loosely coupled to avoid the need of a global synchronization between virtual machines (VMs) during the configuration stage. An evaluation reports the performances of the protocol when applied to deploy enterprise web applications on a private cloud platform.