Blockchain Based Cloud Management Architecture for Maximum Availability

Abstract

Contemporary cloud application and Edge computing orchestration systems rely on controller/worker design patterns to allocate, distribute, and manage resources. Standard solutions like Apache Mesos, Docker Swarm, and Kubernetes can span multiple zones at data centers, multiple global regions, and even consumer point of presence locations. Previous research has concluded that random network partitions cannot be avoided in these scenarios, leaving system designers to choose between consistency and availability, as defined by the CAP theorem. Controller/worker architectures guarantee configuration consistency via the employment of redundant storage systems, in most cases coordinated via consensus algorithms such as Paxos or Raft. These algorithms ensure information consistency against network failures while decreasing availability as network regions increase. Mainstream blockchain technology provides a solution to this compromise while decentralizing control via a fully distributed architecture coordinated through Byzantine-resistant consensus algorithms. This research proposes a blockchain-based decentralized architecture for cloud resource management systems. We analyze and compare the characteristics of the proposed architecture concerning the consistency, availability, and partition resistance of architectures that rely on Paxos/Raft distributed data stores. Our research demonstrates that the proposed blockchain-based decentralized architecture noticeably increases the system availability, including cases of network partitioning, without a significant impact on configuration consistency.