CloudState: End-to-end WAN monitoring for cloud-based applications

Modern data centres are increasingly moving towards more sophisticated cloud-based infrastructures, where servers are consolidated, backups are simplified and where resources can be scaled up, across distributed cloud sites, if necessary. Placing applications and data stores across sites has a cost, in terms of the hosting at a given site, a cost in terms of the migration of application VMs and content across a network, and a cost in terms of the quality of the end-to-end network link between the application and the end-user. This paper details a solution aimed at monitoring all relevant end-to-end network links between VMs, storage and end-users. With this knowledge at hand, it becomes easier to optimise the arrangement of VMs and content with a distributed cloud environment such that resident applications respond in a timely manner, both between cloud-based application components and in the delivery of the application to the end-user. Results show how this system provides network information which influences the choice of location for hosting applications and data.