Intercloud resource discovery using Blockchain

Abstract

The intercloud represents a logical evolution of cloud computing that extends its computational scale and geographic footprint by collaborating with disparate cloud service providers (CSPs) for resource sharing. Discovering resources belonging to heterogeneous CSPs is not only the primary but critical operation for the intercloud. However, achieving resource discovery in a deterministic manner within this global distributed environment is non-trivial. The literature has proposed several resource discovery approaches for the federated intercloud based on trusted and centralized thirdparty entities. Few approaches, however, exist for the non-federated intercloud, which by definition has no central entity to enable the resource discovery process. Some P2P-based resource discovery techniques have been proposed by researchers, industry players and standardization bodies like Global InterCloud Technology Forum (GICTF). However, existing P2P-based approaches in the non-federated intercloud do not adequately address authentication, non-repudiation of resource information, secure storage and management of transactional records, management of trust/reputation and optimal resource selection and provisioning. This research paper presents BIRD, a Blockchain-based Intercloud Resource Discovery framework that involves participating CSPs connected in a P2P network using blockchain to manage resource information and maintain transactional records. The BIRD framework alleviates the requirement of a trusted third party for discovering and managing resources. The main features involved in the BIRD framework are i) latency optimization, ii) fine-grained control mechanism, and iii) Quality-of Service, Trust and Reputation (QTR) indices. Latency optimization achieves faster resource discovery, fine-grained control mechanism for intercloud resource discovery, and QTR is for quality CSP or resource selection. BIRD uses blockchain to maintain transactions between CSPs securely.