A profile-based approach to just-in-time scalability for cloud applications

Cloud platforms offer resource utilization as on-demand service, which lays the foundation for applications to scale during runtime. However, just-in-time scalability is not achieved by simply deploying applications to cloud platforms. Existing approaches require developers to rewrite their applications to leverage the on-demand resource utilization, thus bind applications to specific cloud infrastructure. In this paper, profiles are used to capture experts' knowledge of scaling different types of applications. The profile-based approach automates the deployment and scaling of applications in cloud. Just-in-time scalability is achieved without binding to specific cloud infrastructure. A real case is used to demonstrate the process and feasibility of this profile-based approach. © 2009 IEEE.