@article { IoT2023,
	title = {Towards a Lightweight Task Scheduling Framework for Cloud and Edge Platform},
	journal = {Internet of Things; Engineering Cyber Physical Human Systems},
	year = {2023},
	publisher = {Elsevier},
	abstract = {Mobile devices are becoming ubiquitous in our daily lives, but they have limited computational capacity. Thanks to the advancement in the network infrastructure, task offloading from resource-constrained devices to the near edge and the cloud becomes possible and advantageous. Complete task offloading is now possible to almost limitless computing resources of public cloud platforms. Generally, the edge computing resources support latency-sensitive applications with limited computing resources, while the cloud supports latency-tolerant applications. This paper proposes one lightweight task-scheduling framework from cloud service provider perspective, for applications using both cloud and edge platforms. Here, the challenge is using edge and cloud resources efficiently when necessary. Such decisions have to be made quickly, with a small management overhead. Our framework aims at solving two research questions. They are: i) How to distribute tasks to the edge resource pools and multi-clouds? ii) How to manage these resource pools effectively with low overheads? To answer these two questions, we examine the performance of our proposed framework based on Reliable Server Pooling (RSerPool). We have shown via simulations that RSerPool, with the correct usage and configuration of pool member selection policies, can accomplish the cloud/edge setup resource selection task with a small overhead.},
	keywords = {Cloud computing, Edge Computing, Reliable Server Pooling (RSerPool), Resource Pools, Task Scheduling},
	author = {Dreibholz, Thomas and Mazumdar, Somnath}
}
@inproceedings { M2EC2022,
	title = {Load Distribution for Mobile Edge Computing with Reliable Server Pooling},
	journal = {Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Recent Advances for Multi-Clouds and Mobile Edge Computing~(M2EC) in conjunction with the 36th International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications~(AINA)},
	year = {2022},
	publisher = { Springer},
	address = {Sydney, New South Wales/Australia},
	abstract = {Energy-efficient computing model is a popular choice for high performance as well as throughput oriented computing ecosystems. Mobile (computing) devices are becoming increasingly ubiquitous to our computing domain, but with limited resources (true both for computation as well as for energy). Hence, workload offloading from resource-constrained mobile devices to the Edge and maybe (later) to the cloud become necessary as well as useful. Thanks to the persistent technical breakthroughs in global wireless standards (or in mobile networks) together with the almost limitless amount of resources in public cloud platforms, workload offloading is possible and cheaper. In such scenarios, Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) resources could be provisioned in proximity to the users for supporting latency-sensitive applications. Here, two relevant problems could be: i) How to distribute workload to the resource pools of MEC as well as public (multi-)clouds? ii) How to manage such resource pools effectively? To answer these problems in this paper, we examine the performance of our proposed approach using the Reliable Server Pooling (RSerPool) framework in more detail. We also have outlined the resource pool management policies to effectively use RSerPool for workload offloading from mobile devices into the cloud/MEC ecosystem.},
	keywords = {Cloud computing, Load Distribution, Mobile Edge Computing (MEC), Multi-Cloud Computing, Reliable Server Pooling (RSerPool), Serverless Computing},
	author = {Dreibholz, Thomas and Mazumdar, Somnath}
}
@techreport {27459,
	title = {Blockchain for Healthcare: Opportunities, Challenges, and Future Directions},
	year = {2020},
	publisher = {Simula Research Laboratory},
	abstract = {The continuous generation of large volume of medical data from different sources, such as patient monitoring, clinical trials management, and processing payments and reimbursement claims, makes healthcare a data-intensive domain. This data needs to be shared among different medical facilities for various purposes, such as in-depth data analysis and collaborative research, to achieve innovative advances in the medical treatment procedures and drug developments, and providing personalised healthcare services to the patients. However, the existing data exchange solutions in healthcare domain exhibits several challenges, like data security, patient privacy, data owner consent management, interoperability, and chain-of-custody. Recently, the industry and research community turned its focus on the possible use of blockchain technology to solve one or more of the above challenges in healthcare domain. The blockchain technology along with the support from smart contracts is considered as an adequate solution for secure and efficient medical data sharing. It is due to its unique features, such as decentralization, trustlessness, immutability, traceability, and security. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey on the state-of-the-art efforts that envision the usage of blockchain-based solutions to improve one or more aspects in healthcare domain. 
To this end, first we categorize the existing works based on a set of key challenge(s) that they address in healthcare by using blockchain technology. The particular challenges that we consider for the categorization of the surveyed articles are as follows: (i) security and privacy, (ii) interoperability, (iii) compliance management, (iv) medical records management, and (v) chain-of-custody. Second, we discuss the benefits and limitations that the surveyed solutions exhibit when incorporating blockchain in healthcare. We also investigate the causal relationships among these challenges to demonstrate how various factors causing these challenges are connected with each other. Third, we identify the practical issues that blockchain-driven healthcare must overcome to become a success, and we suggest the additional future research required to address the identified issues. Our survey shows that there is an exponential increase in the number of efforts towards the use blockchain and smart contracts to improve various functionalities in several healthcare services such as clinical trials, medical data management, and drug supply chain management. However, most of these efforts are still in their initial phases, and a lot of work still remains before their integration in practical healthcare scenarios. This work is currently in-progress, and it is planned to be performed in an accepted research-based innovation project by Research Council of Norway called {\textquotedblleft}SMARTMED {\textendash} Secure and accountable sharing of medical records using smart contracts and blockchain{\textquotedblright}.},
	keywords = {blockchain, Cloud computing, Electronic Health Records, Internet of things, Medical data, security and privacy},
	author = {Lal, Chhagan and Marijan, Dusica}
}
@misc {27764,
	title = {The cloud is the limit: scaling limits of JupyterHub},
	year = {2020},
	month = {10/2020},
	address = {JupyterCon},
	abstract = {JupyterHub began as a strictly scoped project for "small-scale" Jupyter deployments. Times change. With increasing pressure to scale JupyterHub to ever larger deployments, the current architecture is reaching its limits. See an overview of the current factors limiting JupyterHub{\textquoteright}s scale what would need to change to make JupyterHub truly scalable.},
	keywords = {Cloud computing, jupyter, jupyterhub},
	url = {https://cfp.jupytercon.com/2020/schedule/presentation/223/the-cloud-is-the-limit-scaling-limits-of-jupyterhub/},
	author = {Ragan-Kelley, Benjamin}
}
@misc { Haikou2019-MELODIC-Introduction,
	title = {MELODIC at Hainan University: An Introduction to the MELODIC Project},
	howpublished = {Hainan University, Haikou, Hainan/People{\textquoteright}s Republic of China},
	year = {2019},
	type = {Keynote Talk},
	abstract = {In former times, it was necessary to operate and maintain powerful personal computers to run applications. Nowadays, many "normal" users just use laptops, tablet PCs or smartphones. Their applications are powered by cloud systems in the background, which are operated in data centres at remote locations and being connected over the Internet. This presentation first introduces the basics of cloud computing: virtualisation, virtual machines, containers, and software as a service. A challenge of using cloud computing is to deploy services to cloud providers, in order to operate them in a cost-efficient way while providing the best application experience to the users. The vision of the Multi-Cloud Execution-Ware for Large-scale Optimised Data-Intensive Computing (MELODIC) project is to enable federated cloud computing for data-intensive applications. Furthermore, it provides the user with an easy-to-use, unified cloud environment, which hides the complexity of a multi-cloud. The second part of this presentation therefore provides an overview of the basic ideas and application use cases of MELODIC.},
	keywords = {Applications, Big Data, Cloud computing, MELODIC, OpenStack},
	author = {Dreibholz, Thomas}
}
@misc { Haikou2019-MELODIC-NorNetCore,
	title = {MELODIC at Hainan University: Combining NorNet Core with MELODIC},
	howpublished = {Haikou, Hainan, People{\textquoteright}s Republic of China},
	year = {2019},
	publisher = {Hainan University},
	type = {Invited Talk},
	abstract = {This talk gives a short overview over the possibilities of testing applications in the NorNet infrastructure. Furthermore, it presents a short overview of the ongoing work on integrating NorNet Core with the MELODIC multi-cloud infrastructure, including the NorNet Core setup at Hainan University and the Haikou College of Economics.},
	keywords = {Cloud computing, MELODIC, Multi-Homing, NorNet Core, NorNet Testbed, OpenStack},
	author = {Dreibholz, Thomas}
}
@inproceedings { PDP2019,
	title = {Mobile Edge as Part of the Multi-Cloud Ecosystem: A Performance Study},
	journal = {Proceedings of the 27th Euromicro International Conference on Parallel, Distributed and Network-Based Processing~(PDP)},
	year = {2019},
	month = {02/2019},
	pages = {59-66},
	publisher = {IEEE Computer Society},
	address = {Pavia, Lombardia/Italy},
	abstract = {Cloud computing has revolutionized the way of application usage and deployment: applications run cost-effectively in remote data centers. With the increasing need for mobility and micro-services, particularly with the upcoming 5G mobile broadband networks, there is also a strong demand for mobile edge computing (MEC): applications run in small cloud systems in close proximity to the user, in order to minimize latencies. Both cloud and MEC have their advantages and disadvantages. Combining the two approaches in a unified multi-cloud, consisting of both traditional cloud services provisioned over heterogeneous cloud platforms and MEC systems, has the potential of obtaining the best out of both worlds. However, a comprehensive study is needed to evaluate the performance gains and the overheads involved for real-world cloud applications. In this paper, we introduce a baseline performance evaluation in order to identify the fallacies and pitfalls of combining multiple cloud systems and MEC into a unified MEC-multi-cloud platform. For this purpose, we analyze the basic, application-independent performance metrics of average round-trip time (RTT) and average application payload throughput in a setup consisting of two private and one public cloud systems. This baseline performance analysis confirms the feasibility of MEC-multi-cloud, and provides guidelines for designing an autonomic resource provisioning solutions, in terms of an extension proposed to our existing Melodic middleware platform for multi-cloud applications.},
	keywords = {Cloud computing, latency, Mobile edge computing, Multi-Cloud, Performance},
	isbn = {978-1-7281-1644-0},
	doi = {10.1109/PDP.2019.00017},
	author = {Dreibholz, Thomas and Mazumdar, Somnath and Zahid, Feroz and Taherkordi, Amirhosein and Ernst Gunnar {Gran}}
}
@inproceedings { M2EC2019-MultiCloud,
	title = {An Overview of Multi-Cloud Computing},
	journal = {Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Recent Advances for Multi-Clouds and Mobile Edge Computing (M2EC) in conjunction with the 33rd International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications (AINA)},
	year = {2019},
	note = {{ISBN} 978-3-030-15034-1},
	month = {04/2019},
	pages = {1055{\textendash}1068},
	publisher = { Springer},
	address = {Matsue, Shimane/Japan},
	abstract = {The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief overview of cloud computing technologies, particularly with respect to multi-cloud networks. First, the basics of cloud computing concepts are discussed. Next we outline some challenges facing cloud computing, and discuss how multi-cloud systems including multi-clouds, hybrid clouds, federated clouds, and cross-clouds may be used to deal with some of these issues. Finally, multi-cloud systems may also be used in conjunction with new developing technologies such as Big Data and Machine Learning, leading to exciting innovations. These are reviewed in brief. Our goal is to provide a modern look at the state of the art in multi-cloud computing and review open issues in the field. The goal is that this paper will help the reader to understand challenges facing cloud computing, how multi-cloud computing addresses some of these issues, and inspire community excitement at the future integration of multi-cloud platforms with other novel technologies.},
	keywords = {Big Data, Cloud computing, Federated Clouds, Hybrid Cloud, Multi-Cloud},
	isbn = {978-3-030-15034-1},
	doi = {10.1007/978-3-030-15035-8_103},
	url = {https://www.simula.no/file/m2ec2019-multicloudpdf-0/download},
	author = {Hong, Jiangshui and Dreibholz, Thomas and Joseph Adam {Schenkel} and Jiaxi Alessia {Hu}}
}
@misc {25736,
	title = {Big Data Applications on Multi-Clouds: An Introduction to the MELODIC Project},
	howpublished = {Haikou, Hainan, People{\textquoteright}s Republic of China},
	year = {2017},
	month = {12/2017},
	address = {Haikou, Hainan, People{\textquoteright}s Republic of China},
	abstract = {{In former times, it was necessary to operate and maintain powerful personal computers to run applications. Nowadays, many "normal" users just use laptops, tablet PCs or smartphones. Their applications are powered by cloud systems in the background, which are operated in data centres at remote locations and being connected over the Internet. This presentation first introduces the basics of cloud computing: virtualisation, virtual machines, containers, and software as a service. A challenge of using cloud computing is to deploy services to cloud providers, in order to operate them in a cost-efficient way while providing the best application experience to the users. The vision of the Multi-Cloud Execution-Ware for Large-scale Optimised Data-Intensive Computing\&nbsp;(MELODIC) project is to enable federated cloud computing for data-intensive applications. Furthermore, it provides the user with an easy-to-use, unified cloud environment, which hides the complexity of a multi-cloud. The second part of this presentation therefore provides an overview of the basic ideas and application use cases of MELODIC.}},
	keywords = {Applications, Big Data, Cloud computing, MELODIC, OpenStack},
	author = {Dreibholz, Thomas}
}
@inproceedings {naseer2017:cloud,
	title = {Cloud Computing Security Threats and Attacks with Their Mitigation Techniques},
	journal = {International Conference on Cyber-Enabled Distributed Computing and Knowledge Discovery (CyberC)2017 International Conference on Cyber-Enabled Distributed Computing and Knowledge Discovery (CyberC)},
	year = {2017},
	month = {10/2017},
	pages = {244-251},
	publisher = {IEEE},
	address = {Nanjing, China},
	abstract = {Cloud computing is a rapidly growing internet technology for facilitating various services to its consumers. It proposes many striking promises to the general public or big companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, IBM, etc., to maintain and upgrade their position in a fast-growing cloud computing environment and to enhance their services for a large number of users. However, with the fast development and enticing offerings, many issues associated with this technology also arise, which need to be addressed, with security being the strongest barrier to its adoption. Security concerns are an active area of research, which needs to be addressed properly to avoid security threats and attacks that are disasters for both service providers and service consumers. This paper highlights cloud computing architectural principles, cloud computing key security requirements, cloud computing security threats and cloud computing security attacks with their mitigation techniques, and future research challenges.},
	keywords = {Cloud computing, mitigation techniques, security attacks, security requirements, security threats},
	isbn = {978-1-5386-2209-4},
	doi = {10.1109/CyberC.2017.37},
	url = {http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8250365/},
	author = {Naseer, Amara and Zhiqui, Huang and Ali, Awais},
	editor = {Juan E. {Guerrero}}
}
@misc {25737,
	title = {Combining NorNet Core with MELODIC},
	howpublished = {Haikou, Hainan, People{\textquoteright}s Republic of China},
	year = {2017},
	address = {Haikou, Hainan, People{\textquoteright}s Republic of China},
	abstract = {This talk gives a short overview over the possibilities of testing applications in the NorNet infrastructure. Furthermore, it presents a short overview of the ongoing work on integrating NorNet Core with the MELODIC multi-cloud infrastructure, including the NorNet Core setup at Hainan University and the Haikou College of Economics.},
	keywords = {Cloud computing, MELODIC, Multi-Homing, NorNet Core, NorNet Testbed, OpenStack},
	author = {Dreibholz, Thomas}
}
@inproceedings {25577,
	title = {Testing Applications with the NorNet Infrastructure},
	journal = {MELODIC Plenary Meeting 2017},
	year = {2017},
	month = {09/2017},
	publisher = {7Bulls},
	address = {Warszawa, Masovia/Poland},
	abstract = {This talk gives a short overview over the possibilities of testing applications in theNorNet infrastructure. Furthermore, it presents a short overview of the ongoing work on integrating NorNet Core with the MELODIC multi-cloud infrastructure.},
	keywords = {Cloud computing, MELODIC, Multi-Homing, NorNet Core, NorNet Testbed, OpenStack},
	author = {Dreibholz, Thomas}
}
@inproceedings {24836,
	title = {Fast Hybrid Network Reconfiguration for Large-Scale Lossless Interconnection Networks},
	journal = {15th IEEE International Symposium on Network Computing and Applications (NCA 2016)},
	year = {2016},
	pages = {101-108},
	publisher = {IEEE},
	abstract = {Reconfiguration of high performance lossless interconnection networks is a cumbersome and time-consuming task. For that reason reconfiguration in large networks are typically limited to situations where it is absolutely necessary, for instance when severe faults occur. On the contrary, due to the shared and dynamic nature of modern cloud infrastructures, performance-driven reconfigurations are necessary to ensure efficient utilization of resources. In this work we present a scheme that allows for fast reconfigurations by limiting the task to sub-parts of the network that can benefit from a local reconfiguration. Moreover, our method is able to use different routing algorithms for different sub-parts within the same subnet. We also present a Fat-Tree routing algorithm that reconfigures a network given a user-provided node ordering. Hardware experiments and large scale simulation results show that we are able to significantly reduce reconfiguration times from 50\% to as much as 98.7\% for very large topologies, while improving performance.},
	keywords = {Cloud computing, Fat-Tree, HPC, InfiniBand, Network Reconfiguration, scalability},
	author = {Tasoulas, Evangelos and Ernst Gunnar {Gran} and Skeie, Tor and Bj{\o}rn Dag {Johnsen}},
	editor = {Pellegrini, Alessandro and Gkoulalas-Divanis, Aris and Di Sanzo, Pierangelo and Dimiter R. {Avresky}}
}
