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Replication is a technique widely used to improve the reliability of applications. State machine replication is a special approach, where a set of computers are kept synchronised in the same state despite of failures that could occur in the system. The Raft algorithm can be used to implement a total order delivery protocol, delivering requests at the same order at all replicas, which is fundamental since in this approach all replicas must execute the same sequence of requests to present the same evolution in their states. Raft is easy to understand and implement, when compared to the Paxos algorithm. On the other hand, virtualisation can be seen as a technique that helps the development of reliable applications since it maintains each virtual machine (VM) isolated from the others. Virtualisation in data centres is changing from the traditional VMs to containers. In this context, this paper proposes KRaft, an incorporation of Raft in Kubernetes, a system that manages containers. After an evaluation of performance and resource consumption of KRaft, we found that it presents performance close to Raft executing on physical machines. Moreover, KRaft demands more network transmission while Raft executed in physical machines needs more processing power and memory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a novel multi-objective ant colony system algorithm for virtual machine (VM) consolidation in cloud data centres. The proposed algorithm builds VM migration plans, which are then used to minimise over-provisioning of physical machines (PMs) by consolidating VMs on under-utilised PMs. It optimises two objectives that are ordered by their importance. The first and foremost objective in the proposed algorithm is to maximise the number of released PMs. Moreover, since VM migration is a resource-intensive operation, it also tries to minimise the number of VM migrations. The proposed algorithm is empirically evaluated in a series of experiments. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm provides an efficient solution for VM consolidation in cloud data centres. Moreover, it outperforms two existing ant colony optimization-based VM consolidation algorithms in terms of number of released PMs and number of VM migrations. MOACS advances the state of the art on ACO-based VM consolidation by implementing a multi-objective, multi-colony ACS algorithm. It extends our previous single-objective, single-colony ACO algorithm for VM consolidation and similar works by other researchers that implement single-objective, single-colony ACO algorithms. The proposed multi-objective, multi-colony approach eliminates the need for an aggregate objective function (AOF) and allows to combine the optimisation objectives in an appropriate manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Programmable networks are a substantial part of current R&D on future internet (FI) in Europe and worldwide, with considerable impact generated by large-scale test bed infrastructures. In such test beds, researchers validate proof-of-concept prototypes for new algorithms and mechanisms for efficiently controlling and managing network resources. One of the key domains for FI research is software-defined networking (SDN), which creates innovations in existing Internet architectures by shifting the control and logic outside the network equipment to Data Centres. International cooperation among leading research centres in Europe, Americas and Asia is key to validate SDN foundations and tools. EU and Japan have jointly funded the FELIX project (federated test-beds for large-scale infrastructure experiments), which defines a common control and orchestration framework to manage federated FI test beds across continents. This framework enables an experimenter to (i) request and obtain resources across different test bed infrastructures dynamically; (ii) manage and control the network paths connecting the federated SDN test beds; (iii) monitor the underlying resources and (iv) use distributed applications executed on the federated infrastructures. This paper describes the high-level architecture of the FELIX framework and details six use cases that will be employed for validation. We present our analysis and end-user considerations, highlighting the necessity for resource accessibility and coherent use of physical connections over a large-scale test bed where different control technologies such as OpenFlow and the network service interface (NSI) are simultaneously used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]