Building a Community Cloud Infrastructure for a Logistics Project

Maria Teresa Baldassarre

, Nicola Boffoli

, Danilo Caivano

1,2

Gennaro del Campo

and Giuseppe Visaggio

1,2

Department of Informatics, University of Bari, Bari, Italy

SER&Practices SPIN-OFF, Bari, Italy

Keywords: Cloud Computing, Private Cloud, SaaS, Integrated Logistics.

Abstract: Cloud computing is becoming more and more adopted as infrastructure for providing service oriented

solutions. Such a solution is especially critical when software and hardware resources are remotely

distributed. In this paper we illustrate our experience in designing the architecture of a community cloud

infrastructure in an industrial project related to integrated logistics (LOGIN) for made in Italy brand

products. The cloud infrastructure has been designed with particular attention towards aspects such as

virtualization, server consolidation and business continuity.

1 INTRODUCTION

Cloud computing is rapidly becoming a common

model adopted for delivery and utilization of

services over the internet in the sense that it provides

computer infrastructure and services on an on-

demand and on-need basis, without organizations or

users having to sustain large hardware and software

investments. Rather, the services provided are

accessed on a pay-per-use modality, i.e. users pay

for what they use of the computer infrastructure and

services provided (Marston 2011). Another benefit

of this model is the fact that services are available

over the web from any site, without the user needing

to know details concerning the software, interface or

services (Wang 2008). In spite the several

definitions of cloud computing in literature

(Armbrust 2011, Lenk et.al 1999, Mell et al.2011,

Wang et al.2008) the software engineering research

and industrial community has conformed to adopt

the definition provided by the US National Institute

of Standards and Technology (NIST) according to

which: “Cloud computing is a model for enabling

convenient on-demand network access to a shared

pool of configurable computing resources (e.g.

Networks, servers, storage, applications and

services) that can be rapidly provisioned and

released with minimal management effort or service

provider interaction. This cloud model is composed

of five essential characteristics, three service models

and four deployment models” (Mell et al. 2008).

The aim of this paper is to present our specific

experience in designing and developing a

community cloud infrastructure (Baiardi et. al 2010)

within a research project on integrated logistics

called LOGIN. The aim of the project was to build

an extended Digital Network Enterprise (DBE) able

to provide digital services for logistics. The DNE is

based on a software platform through which all

enterprises that require logistic services request the

services they need and the platform then combines

the services available to meet the demand.

The design and implementation of an IT platform

for managing real-time logistic flows with respect to

both tangible and intangible assets converges

towards the need of a digital business ecosystem

between logistic suppliers and users. The support to

such technologies requires a highly flexible cloud

infrastructure that meets the requirements and

specifications of all the partners involved in the

project. Moreover, the cloud infrastructure must be

able to provide access to remotely distributed

hardware and software resources. These resources

must be scalable entities that provide a service and

are available over the web.

This paper presents the details of the cloud

infrastructure developed to orchestrate and manage

all the services related to a logistics project. In the

next section the architecture of the cloud

infrastructure is defined with details on the quality

420

Baldassarre M., Boffoli N., Caivano D., del Campo G. and Visaggio G..

Building a Community Cloud Infrastructure for a Logistics Project.

DOI: 10.5220/0005400504200427

In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS-2015), pages 420-427

ISBN: 978-989-758-097-0

 2015 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

characteristics addressed and the three layers of the

architecture (hardware, software, virtualization). A

short description of the application of the cloud

solution to the logistics project is then provided.

Finally conclusions are drawn.

2 CLOUD SOLUTION FOR

LOGISTICS

As first step, we analysed the deployment models

among the available ones: private, public,

community, and hybrid cloud (Armbrust et al. 2011,

Baiardi et al.2010, Grossman et al.2009), and

decided upon a community cloud. This was the most

appropriate since the LOGIN project involved

several industrial partners and research organizations

having in common a set of software systems to share

in the infrastructure. The choice of a community

cloud turned out to be the most cost effective and

able to assure security and privacy at the same time

as the services are available to the all members of

the community. The service model chosen was SaaS

as it consisted of offering the services to users on a

pay-per-use basis, according to a specific

econometric model shared by all the partners

involved. Second, we identified the components of

the cloud infrastructure:

 hardware components (Hardware Layer);

 technologies for virtualization based on the

hardware layer (Virtualization Layer);

 platforms and tools for managing the cloud

environment (Software Layer).

The cloud computing solution had to enable

access to hardware and software resources remotely

accessible via web. Furthermore, the service was to

assure provision of virtual machines (VM) suitable

to host the software components required for the

realization of the LOGIN platform. Users were to

access to a:

 Portal: access point to the cloud infrastructure

from where it is possible to access and

manage VM (create, delete, power-on, reset,

power-off, …) functionalities.

 Services Catalogue: a catalogue of services

(virtual machines/ software) preconfigured

with an operating system and applications (db

server, web server, etc.). From this catalogue

users are able to choose resources and services

based on their needs in real time.

2.2 Quality Characteristics

The cloud computing infrastructure was developed

pursuing the following quality characteristics:

 high usage percentages of resources:

implemented with technical workloads

designed to reallocate resources automatically

and dynamically in accordance with the

priorities set;

 support to virtualization;

 scalability of resources both upwards (adding

resources) and downwards (reducing the

resources assigned to a service);

 dynamic allocation: on-demand for resources

based on a self-service concept. The user can

autonomously access the portal and create or

eliminate a VM or change its characteristics in

terms of resource allocation;

 reliability of the systems that should be able to

support a failover;

 security. A network firewall is assigned to

every VM. Protection policies can be

personalized;

 reduction of management costs for what

concerns energy consumption, network and

physical space occupied.

As of today, to the best of our knowledge, there

is no common adopted standard for securing the

information of a cloud infrastructure (Mell and

Grance 2009, Srinvasanm and Rodrigues 2012).

Moreover, literature provides various reference

models for cloud, each proposed by different

organizations and related to different perspectives

(Farzad 2011). Solutions can be based on the service

model used (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) or the deployment

model adopted (Public, Private, Community,

Hybrid) as well as on the technology adopted or take

into account other criteria such as physical location

of the data, ownership of the resources, architecture

of the IT solution, management of the services

provided, just to name a few. Consequently,

depending on the characteristics one refers to,

different security needs should be considered

(Humberg et al. 2013, Grobauer et al. 2010). In

Humberg (2013) for example, authors propose a

methodology that supports users in examining

models of their systems and processes for potential

risks.

In defining the cloud infrastructure of the

requirements of the ISO 27000 series standards (ISO

27001:2005, ISO27002:2007) with focus on IT-

security risks (ISO27005:2008). The ISO27001

standard details the requirements for defining and

information security management system taking into

account the best practices listed in the ISO27002

document, whereas the risk management process

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phases are detailed in ISO27005. When evaluating

the risk level of the LOGIN cloud infrastructure we

integrated the process illustrated by the ISO27005

standard with the European Union Agency for

Network and Information Security risk assessment

process (ENISA 2009). Further details of the

analysis and results are reported in (LOGIN 2012).

2.3 Architecture

From an implementation perspective, the cloud

computing approach involves definition of three

layers: hardware, software and virtualization, along

with a set of guidelines for designing the

applications to bind to the cloud infrastructure.

Relevant importance is assigned to the virtualization

layer which, although physically an integrated part

of the software layer, it is positioned between the

latter and the hardware level. Figure1 shows the

description of the architecture designed and then

implemented where one can see the main

instruments for developing the sub-components:

“Hypervisor” for the VTL layer and “Cloud

Manager” for the SWL layer. Furthermore, the

network model (Figure.1) points out two

communication zones: one for managing the entire

cloud infrastructure (management network) and one

for providing the services (customer network).

In the next paragraphs the three layers of the

architecture implemented are described. The

representation of the layers is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 1: Network model.

Figure 2: Implementation of the Architecture Layer.

2.3.1 Hardware Layer (HWL)

This layer is responsible for defining the physical

resources, such as: servers, routers, switch, electric

power systems, air conditioning and UPS. The cloud

infrastructure implemented follows a hybrid

approach with both central and distributed systems.

In particular we have used an IBM Mainframe

System z9 Business Class (BC) and server Intel x86.

2.3.2 Virtualization Layer (VTL)

The main focus of the virtualization layer is its

ability to abstract both software and hardware

components of machines and make them available to

other components as virtual resources. This layer

creates a pool of storage and computational

resources partitioning the physical resources through

the use of virtualization technologies. This layer is

an essential component and provides many of the

key features including dynamic resource allocation.

The VTL, as for HWL, has been implemented

with a hybrid solution made up by different

hypervisors that rely on different hardware

architectures. More precisely it is made up of a

z/VM for the System z architecture and a VMware

for the System x architecture.

The main functionalities of the solution for this

layer are:

 multitasking, as it supports the contemporary

execution of multiple operating systems (guest

OS);

 isolation, assures that a malfunction in a VM

and of the operating system connected to it

does not spread to other virtual machines;

 resources and workload management, prevents

an operative system from absorbing all the

computing power of a CPU slowing down all

the other virtual machines;

 administration: the system administrator can

start, stop, reconfigure or clone the VM

without having to stop those not involved in

the transaction.

2.3.3 Software Layer (SWL)

This layer is made up of cloud management systems

on one hand and operative systems and application

frameworks on the other. The main objective of this

layer is to assure that the characteristics of cloud

computing are respected and adequate service levels

are assured. This is possible through configuration,

management, monitoring and measurement

resources allocated and used to minimize the

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workload deriving from the deployment of the

operating system and applications.

Significant features are represented by the

automation of IT environments, such as allowing

users to request new resources (provisioning) in a

self-service manner and being able to fulfil them

rapidly. The cloud computing infrastructure is

completed by a set of tools that support users, the

system administrator and the cloud administrator.

The software solution involves using the IBM Tivoli

Service Automation Manager (TSAM) suite as

backend application, and IBM Tivoli Monitoring

(ITM) as monitoring platform.

Two software applications complete the software

layer: Maximo and Simple Service Request

Manager. The Maximo platform controls the

underlying hardware infrastructure on which the

virtualization of the virtual machines (VM) is built.

The cloud administrator who defines the rules

needed to deploy each service uses it. Maximo also

manages authorizations assigned to users in the role

of TSAM Administrator. More precisely, users that

are assigned to this role can carry out administrative

tasks relating to the back-end component such as:

publish images, view reports on the service use and

on user activities; configure, enable, or cancel the

registration of software packages. On the other hand

SimpleSRM offers final users (system

administrators) functionalities for creating,

modifying, managing and monitoring each IT

context in terms of VM, resources assigned to each

VM and middleware/applications to install on each

VM. All the previous operations are carried out in a

self-service mode. A VM can be provisioned using

Service Request Manager. Also, with Service

Request Manager it’s possible to access to basic

tasks on VM like: power-on, power-off, restart, reset

password and so on.

The main interface is presented in figure 3. It is

possible to access all the operations, while on the

right side a summary view of requests and projects is

shown. An example of provisioning is depicted in

figure 4. On the bottom part of the form it is possible

Figure 3: Simple SRM access interface.

to specify the amount of resources to reserve for VM

or for various instances of VM such as: how many

CPUs, how much memory, or disk space.

Figure 4: Example of Provisioning.

2.4 Services and Applications

A set of services and applications have been

developed and installed on the cloud infrastructure

as integrated part of the LOGIN-ICT platform

(Figure 5). In the following a brief description is

provided for each sub-system.

 SAPS: system for automated management of

planning and scheduling. It uses advanced

methods for process management and

modelling as well as techniques for

transforming a process model into a project

plan;

 SGQ: quality management system. It includes

editing tools as well as instruments for

verifying, validating and executing a quality

model for process or product goals;

 EDI: electronic data interchange. Manages

logistic, commercial and financial document

flows;

 SICOR: system for creating and composing

organisms of a digital business ecosystem

(DBE). More precisely: stakeholders make a

request (e.g. an order, specific competences,

supply of goods, etc.), and the SICOR

component processes the request by

identifying possible suppliers and composing

a contract between users and suppliers;

 GESCA: freight management. This service

integrates algorithms for optimizing freights

based on criteria such as packaging of goods

and containers used to transport them;

 FDBMS: federated database management

system. Federates the databases, either

exogenous or endogenous, that the system

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needs in a virtual database that users or

applications may access;

 POD: process oriented development. Allows

to formally describe a process and transform it

into an executable workflow;

 SRADIF: system for warehouse and transport

management. It organizes transportation of

goods based on RFID technology and

monitors warehouse environments where the

goods are stored;

 BI&RB: business intelligence and report

building. This service guides users among the

data collected related to the business processes

and products monitored in the quality

management system (SGQ) and the

information extracted through business

intelligence features;

 COLLAB-WEB: collaborative web is a set of

packages for enhancing collaboration among

stakeholders. They include features such as:

FAQ, forums, CRM and e-mail. The system

guides the user in choosing the package that

best suits his communication needs.

3 APPLICATION TO A

LOGISTICS PROJECT

The community cloud infrastructure has been

developed and applied within a research project

involving thirty small to medium enterprise partners

and three research organizations.

The focus of the project was to develop an

integrated platform for the provision of advanced

integrated logistics services (LOGIN). In detail, the

aim is to optimize the entire value chain, from

production of materials to their sale on international

markets through multimodal transport systems such

as sea, rails, tires, etc. (Figure.7). The goods the

project refers to are made in Italy brands such as

DOP wines, cheeses, clothes, local goods.

A user accesses the LOGIN HUB where the

services are listed and selects what is needed for

ordering and managing the goods. The services are

all provided through the community cloud

infrastructure described in the previous section and

are provided in SaaS mode. Services are

distinguished in services for logistics operators and

logistics users. The first category include services

such as: planning, monitoring and tracking of goods;

prevention and intervention in critical situations;

secure transportation of goods; coordination of

requests; interaction with public administrations;

coordination of goods plan and information.

Whereas services for logistic users include:

coordination of demand and supply; booking of

goods; supply chain management just to name a few.

Currently the research project is at the

experimental phase where case studies have been

designed for testing the platform and the community

cloud infrastructure in its whole. More precisely,

case studies have been designed for coordinating

logistics concerning domains such as fish market,

wineries, oil mills, agro-industry partners (local

vegetable and cheese producers). In the next section

we will describe the case study currently being

carried out in a fish market domain.

3.1 Case Study Scenario: Fish Market

The case study consists in the development of

features for tracking the catch within a commercial

Figure 5: LOGIN-ICT Platform Services and Application.

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424

fishing industry. The chain involves the following

stakeholders: fishermen, buyers (wholesale,

supermarkets), chain operators (carriers), final seller,

consumer. The fish marketing chain is made up of

the following phases:

 fishermen communicate their catch

(COLLAB-WEB component);

 wholesales/supermarkets make a purchase

order of the fish caught (SICOD component)

to the fishermen;

 order is confirmed; traceability labels, QR-

Code, are printed and affixed on the catch

cases. This is done through an e-commerce

portal built with Joomla CMS OSS;

 the catch is submitted to the carrier on the

port;

 catch is sold at retail price. Each product is

identified and tracked by QR-code placed on

the merchandise either it is the entire case, a

package or single piece (components involved

are EDI, POD, FBMS, SRADIF);

In this scenario each product can by tracked by

their QR-Code.

Once modelled, the above phases were enhanced

and carried out through a solution made up of the

following parts:

 A mobile application installed on a tabled

used by fishermen to register their catch in a

centralized database; confirm the purchase

order of buyers; print the QR-code labels for

tracking the catch sold;

The application can be used directly on the

fishing boat or the pier as long as there is a WiFi or

cell phone network connection.

 An e-commerce web portal where authorized

buyers can make purchase orders of the catch

previously registered by the fishermen;

 A web portal where chain operators (carriers,

retail sellers) can register the traceability

information, print the QR-Code labels and

show all the tracking information to a client;

 A web and mobile portal that shows all the

tracking data of a sold product associated to a

specific QR-Code.

The integration of all the data managed during

the various phases of the commercial fish market

chain on behalf of all the stakeholders is supported

by the process oriented logic (SAPS and POD

components) that allow to model the process flows

and automate as many steps as possible through the

available services of the LOGIN HUB platform

components.

3.2 Benefits of the Solution

The community cloud infrastructure has proven to

be a beneficial solution in terms of scalability,

flexibility and also server consolidation. More

details are presented in the next paragraphs.

3.2.1 Scalability & Flexibility

For what concerns scalability, it is the case to

distinguish between vertical and horizontal. Vertical

scalability requires adding resources to an existing

one (a VM in our case) that hosts a single instance of

the application in order to better manage the

workload; Horizontal scalability refers to the

capability of an entity (application/service in our

case) of incrementing its resources adding servers

(VM) on which to distribute the workload.

In general SaaS applications should assure

scalability and sharing of resources, whenever

necessary, according to a multi-tenant perspective.

This requires that applications use appropriate

languages, primitives, techniques and technologies.

The LOGIN platform includes both SaaS

applications (designed and oriented towards cloud)

and traditional ones (e.g. web applications) that use

the resources made available by the underlying layer

of the cloud architecture. In this context, scalability

was addressed differently according to the software.

For SaaS applications horizontal scaling was

adopted by provisioning new VM where the

application itself could distribute the workload. In

this case the underlying cloud infrastructure

provided the necessary flexibility for producing an

appropriate execution environment (VM) quickly.

The distribution of the workload wouldn’t have been

possible if the application had not been designed to

work in the cloud. The tracking and monitoring

component of the infrastructure, which must manage

large amounts of data, represents an example.

For traditional applications (e.g, web portals that

users use to interact with the system) vertical scaling

was carried out. This implied increasing the

resources made available by the VMs hosting the

applications. In some cases, by exploiting advanced

features of the underlying middleware, (DBMS,

HTTP servers, etc.) ad hoc solutions were

implemented which achieved horizontal scalability

through clustering techniques. The underlying cloud

infrastructure also in this case provided the

necessary flexibility for quickly producing an

appropriate execution environment (VM).

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3.2.2 Server Consolidation

Data Centre Infrastructure Management (DCIM) are

software tools used for managing a data centre. A

modern DCIM should include strategies and

functionalities for consolidating the workload on a

minimum number of physical servers, allowing

saving between 30% and 60% of energy

consumption and obtaining similar results for what

concerns CO2 emissions. In order to achieve server

consolidation we have assigned VM to physical

servers so that none of them ended up being neither

under-utilized (wasting energy since a server with

low workload still consumes 70% of the energy

consumed at full load), nor over-utilized.

Nonetheless, the consolidation problem of VMs is

an NP-Hard problem and as so, there are currently,

to the best of our knowledge, no efficient solutions

for this problem with respect to nontrivial sized data

centres (Mastroianni et al. 2013. In the consolidation

carried out tools have been integrated with the

common virtual platforms of z/VM and VMWare

and support management of heterogeneous data

centres. This has been guaranteed by using a

uniform dashboard integrated with (API) libraries of

the underlying virtualization platforms in order to

retrieve information from the servers and govern the

assignment and migration operations of the VM so

that efficiency is maximized and energy

consumption is minimized.

Before the consolidation (left part) the VM were

distributed on 8 physical servers and the resource

consumption was between 20-50%. At the end of the

consolidation process (right part) the same VM were

redistributed so that the workload was distributed

across four servers with a resource consumption

ranging between 70-90%. The other servers were

shut off of put in low consumption mode to save

energy.

In short, the scalable strategy adopted for

consolidation consisted in distributing the

intelligence instead of centralizing it in a single

point and migrating from deterministic algorithms to

solutions able to distribute the workload on the VM

based on their usage.

4 CONCLUSIONS

We have shown how a cloud computing

infrastructure has been developed for providing

services within a logistics project to all the users. In

particular we have chosen a community cloud as

deployment model and SaaS as service model for

providing the services to users. The fish market case

study scenario has illustrated how the components

(services and applications) built on the cloud

infrastructure communicate and interact in a real

context. The solution identified has assured

scalability and flexibility, as well as energy saving.

The community cloud infrastructure has allowed

users of the LOGIN project to access services on a

pay per use basis without having to purchase

software products and install them on their

computers or company servers as all applications are

accessed remotely. The project is in still in execution

as further case studies are being carried out in other

contexts such as wine distribution and furniture

market.

Figure 6: LOGIN platform: services are managed by the LOGIN HUB and then coordinated among the distributors (market,

airport, port, road transport, intermodal, warehouse, rail station) to respond to a specific demand.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The work presented in this paper is the result of the

research project “LOGIN – LOGistica INTegrata”

funded by the Ministry of Industry and Economical

Development (MISE) - Industria 2015 Bando Nuove

Tecnologie per il Made in Italy

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