Special Issue "Cloud Computing and Applications, Volume II"

A special issue of Electronics (ISSN 2079-9292). This special issue belongs to the section "Computer Science & Engineering".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 February 2022.

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Filipe Araujo
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Informatics Engineering, University of Coimbra, 3004-531 Coimbra, Portugal
Interests: distributed systems; edge and cloud computing; wireless ad hoc networks
Special Issues and Collections in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues, 

Tens of years of progress in computer hardware, networks and the recent enhancements in virtualization and containerization made the long-sought vision of cloud computing possible. Cloud providers compete with a wide portfolio of pay-as-you-go services, from simple computing or storage infrastructure, to machine learning services, including image, speech, and text recognition. More than simple IT outsourcing, these services can spark new, innovative and affordable products. 

While the benefits are undeniable, citizens and companies must still consider a few drawbacks. First, as integration with the cloud increases, the complex pricing schemes become harder to manage and control. A second risk is vendor lock-in, as companies upgrade their online presence with state-of-the-art provider-dependent cloud services. At the same time, companies should be able to retain part of their data on premises, or explore different providers, in hybrid and multi-cloud solutions, while maintaining observability, to ensure fine-tuned, highly performant distributed systems. 

The challenges for providers are equally demanding. Downtime, data losses, and data breaches can jeopardize third-party businesses, causing all sorts of damage. To preclude such scenarios, providers must replicate data and services, while maintaining privacy, by preventing access by other users, attackers and their own employees. Finally, providers must operate efficiently, or competition will drive them out of the market.

This Special Issue aims at publishing high-quality manuscripts covering new research on topics related to cloud computing, including but not limited to the following:

  • Cloud applications
  • Cloud architecture
  • Virtualization, containerization and container orchestration
  • Public, private and hybrid clouds
  • Interoperability and portability
  • Microservices
  • Observability and monitoring of distributed systems
  • Security and privacy
  • Reliable operation
  • Efficient operation

Prof. Dr. Filipe Araujo
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Electronics is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Cloud applications
  • Cloud architecture
  • Virtualization, containerization and container orchestration
  • Public, private and hybrid clouds
  • Interoperability and portability
  • Microservices
  • Observability and monitoring of distributed systems
  • Security and privacy
  • Reliable operation
  • Efficient operation

Published Papers (2 papers)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

Article
Swarm-Like Distributed Algorithm for Scheduling a Microservice-Based Application to the Cloud Servers
Electronics 2021, 10(13), 1553; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10131553 - 27 Jun 2021
Viewed by 367
Abstract
Introduction of virtualization containers and container orchestrators fundamentally changed the landscape of cloud application development. Containers provide an ideal way for practical implementation of microservice-based architecture, which allows for repeatable, generic patterns that make the development of reliable, distributed applications more approachable and [...] Read more.
Introduction of virtualization containers and container orchestrators fundamentally changed the landscape of cloud application development. Containers provide an ideal way for practical implementation of microservice-based architecture, which allows for repeatable, generic patterns that make the development of reliable, distributed applications more approachable and efficient. Orchestrators allow for shifting the accidental complexity from inside of an application into the automated cloud infrastructure. Existing container orchestrators are centralized systems that schedule containers to the cloud servers only at their startup. In this paper, we propose a swarm-like distributed cloud management system that uses live migration of containers to dynamically reassign application components to the different servers. It is based on the idea of “pheromone” robots. An additional mobile agent process is placed inside each application container to control the migration process. The number of parallel container migrations needed to reach an optimal state of the cloud is obtained using models, experiments, and simulations. We show that in the most common scenarios the proposed swarm-like algorithm performs better than existing systems, and due to its architecture it is also more scalable and resilient to container death. It also adapts to the influx of containers and addition of new servers to the cloud automatically. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Cloud Computing and Applications, Volume II)
Show Figures

Figure 1

Article
A Huffman-Based Joint Compression and Encryption Scheme for Secure Data Storage Using Physical Unclonable Functions
Electronics 2021, 10(11), 1267; https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10111267 - 25 May 2021
Viewed by 617
Abstract
With the developments of Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud-computing technologies, cloud servers need storage of a huge volume of IoT data with high throughput and robust security. Joint Compression and Encryption (JCAE) scheme based on Huffman algorithm has been regarded as a [...] Read more.
With the developments of Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud-computing technologies, cloud servers need storage of a huge volume of IoT data with high throughput and robust security. Joint Compression and Encryption (JCAE) scheme based on Huffman algorithm has been regarded as a promising technology to enhance the data storage method. Existing JCAE schemes still have the following limitations: (1) The keys in the JCAE would be cracked by physical and cloning attacks; (2) The rebuilding of Huffman tree reduces the operational efficiency; (3) The compression ratio should be further improved. In this paper, a Huffman-based JCAE scheme using Physical Unclonable Functions (PUFs) is proposed. It provides physically secure keys with PUFs, efficient Huffman tree mutation without rebuilding, and practical compression ratio by combining the Lempel-Ziv and Welch (LZW) algorithm. The performance of the instanced PUFs and the derived keys was evaluated. Moreover, our scheme was demonstrated in a file protection system with the average throughput of 473Mbps and the average compression ratio of 0.5586. Finally, the security analysis shows that our scheme resists physical and cloning attacks as well as several classic attacks, thus improving the security level of existing data protection methods. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Cloud Computing and Applications, Volume II)
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop