Description
Why Service Level Agreements (SLAs)?
Service Level Agreements or SLAs define the way that providers, e.g. Public Cloud Infrastructure As A Service providers, are offering their services to their clientele. An SLA is defined in a form of a contract with specific metric values that must be met by the provider or else an SLA Violation of its contractual terms occurs. Although it is straightforward to compute SLA metric values when needed, there is no holistic system that fairly calculates the respective metrics under a well-defined or pre-agreed mechanism; each provider defines their own methods of metrics computation without transparency to their clientele. The objective of this project is to address the existing gray areas of the SLA monitoring process by bringing (i.) transparency to the SLA monitoring for both the client and the provider and (ii.) privacy to the SLA computations through the result framework.
What is 'SLA Self-Assessment with Hyperledger Fabric' about?
With a vision of massive SLA Self-Assessment adoption in future Internet ecosystems, this project aims to produce an open source SLA intelligence solution with native operational transparency and privacy by leveraging the endorsement of trusted computation inside Hyperledger Fabric, i.e. Trusted Execution Environment adoption. When an SLA is assessed the corresponding intelligence is completed within enclaved smart contracts that are isolated from other on-chain parties activities. The produced framework will constitute a permissioned ecosystem where the entities participating in an SLA contract commonly agree beforehand on all the respective SLA intelligence rules, while the deployed SLA Self-Assessment scheme constantly audits the corresponding SLA metrics based on these pre-approved regulations.
What is the overall project suggested plan?
The overall project plan is divided into three phases while the mentee is properly guided by their mentor in each phase. In the first phase, the development of the Fabric chaincodes for the SLA operations and their integration points occurs in the context of an entire decentralized architecture. In the second phase, building on the required interactions with on- and off-chain data is addressed with details as understood and designed on the previous phase. Finally, the holistic approach is developed in the third phase, where permissioned ecosystem is formed end-to-end and its related documentation is produced.
Additional Information
- ISO/IEC 19086-2:2018 Cloud Computing—Service Level Agreement (SLA) Framework—Part 2: Metric Model. Available online: https://www.iso.org/standard/67546.html.
Kapsoulis, N.; Psychas, A.; Litke, A.; Varvarigou, T. Reinforcing SLA Consensus on Blockchain. Computers 2021, 10, 159. https://doi.org/10.3390/computers10120159.
Learning Objectives
The selected Mentee will benefit from the following learning objectives:
- Good exposure to the significance of the natural coupling between open source capabilities and immediate industry needs
- Clarifying the demand for SLAs to be established and maintained in a decentralized way
- Enhance the knowledge related to trusted computation importance in blockchain environments
- Deeper understanding of Hyperledger Fabric concepts
- Hands-on experience with open source software development, particularly:
- Hyperledger Fabric network
- Fabric Private Chaincode
- Systems integration and interoperability
- Managing on- and off-chain data
Expected Outcome
The expected outcomes of the project would include:
- Build the Fabric chaincodes for the SLA operations
- Build the required interactions with on- and off-chain data
- Integrate into a holistic ecosystem that allows for SLA to assess themselves inside a permissioned environment
- Produce relevant documentation of how to use and how to develop on the result framework
Relation to Hyperledger
Hyperledger Fabric: https://github.com/hyperledger/fabric
Hyperledger Fabric Private Chaincode: https://github.com/hyperledger/fabric-private-chaincode
Education Level
Experienced undergraduate students could be eligible. Masters or Ph.D. levels preferred.
Skills
Required:
- Good communicator and team spirit
- Willingness to create and learn on novel blockchain approaches
- Good understanding of Hyperledger Fabric concepts
- Basic experience with managing a Hyperledger Fabric network and deploying chaincodes
- Basic understanding of SLA concepts
Preferred:
- Experience in research
Future plans
The plan for this project is to set the appropriate platform fundamentals towards the standardization of industry SLA operations inside a Hyperledger ecosystem environment.
Preferred Hours and Length of Internship
Both Full-time (40 hours a week for 12 weeks during the summer) and Part-time (20 hours a week for 24 weeks starting in summer and ending in fall) are accepted. Preferably Full-time.
Mentor(s) Names and Contact Info
Nikos Kapsoulis Innov-Acts Ltd., nkapsoulis@innov-acts.com.