Adaptive SLA mechanism for service sharing in virtual environments

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to discuss an adaptive SLA mechanism for service sharing in virtual environment, which can organize and govern QoS items in terms of service execution time, reliability, and availability, and provides a common understanding about services, responsibilities, priorities, guarantees and warranties-related virtual cooperative issues. Design/methodology/approach The management framework for SLA is introduced, based on which the whole process including SLA contract, adaptive SLA negotiation strategy, SLA deployment and SLA assessment are discussed, and the prototype is implemented in the cloud manufacturing platform. Findings A proposed SLA framework for service sharing in virtual environments is given; electronic contracts are designed in the framework for encapsulating measurable aspects of service level agreements so as to provide common understanding about the service; and an improved SLA negotiation strategy with three phases is presented for the dynamicity of the virtual services. Originality/value The paper presents a very useful adaptive SLA mechanism for service sharing in virtual environments that can be utilized in concurrent or future advanced manufacturing modes.