Multi-objective middleware for distributed VMI repositories in federated cloud environment

Virtualization represents an essential technology in Cloud computing, which allows virtual machines (VM) to be executed within their own environment on top of physical hardware. The modern methods for software delivery are utilizing the concept of Vitual Machine as a efficient tool for software packaging. Typically, VMs are created using specific templates that are stored in proprietary repositories, thus leading to provider lock-in and reduced portability in the cases of simultaneous usage of multiple federated Clouds. Unfortunately, the current state-of-the-art does not provide any efficient means for streamlined management of VM images across multiple repositories, especially within federated Cloud environments. In this paper we present a novel multi-objective middleware for distributed VMI repositories in federated Cloud environment. The middleware has been designed to provide easy to use interface capable of receiving unmodified and functionally complete VM images from its users, and transparently distribute them to a specific Cloud infrastructure in a federation with respect to their size, configuration, and geographical distribution, such that they are loaded, delivered, and executed faster and with improved QoS compared to their current behaviour.