Journal of Robotics, Networking and Artificial Life, Vol. 1, No. 2 (September 2014), 155-159

A Study of Open Source Cloud System for Small and Medium Enterprise
Yasuo Uchida*, Matsuno Seigo, Masayoshi Hasama

Department of Business Administration, Ube National College of Technology,
Ube, Yamaguchi 755-8555, Japan
Takao Ito

Graduate School of Engineering, Hiroshima University,Higashi-Hiroshima, 739-8527, Japan
Makoto Sakamoto

Dept. of Computer Science and Systems Engineering, University of Miyazaki,
Miyazaki, 889-2192, Japan*Corresponding author, E-mail: uchida@ube-k.ac.jp

Tel: +81-836-35-7567, Fax: +81-836-35-7567

Abstract
Cloud computing services have not been yet deployed widely by the SMEs in Japan. Due to its many advantages,
special skills and support techniques for the SMEs need to be developed in order to implement cloud computing
services. A research of the relevant literature reveals that virtually no published academic research has focused on
the rational relationship between cloud computing services and the SME’s information infrastructure. Accordingly,
to bridge this gape in our understanding of cloud computing, this paper proposes and designs a special systemframework of cloud computing for the SMEs. Moreover, we devise a prototype model and identify the possibilityof the system implementation. Services that deliver functionality equivalent to Amazon EC2 which is representative
cloud service but delivered through other technologies are called EC2 clones. OpenStack is not an EC2 clone, andis a typical open source project for providing Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) type cloud services. OpenStack isused in this research to implement a basic cloud service model.
Keywords: cloud, open source, small and medium sized enterprise, OpenStack

1. Introduction
Today’s information systems must be able to continue
stable operation even during crises such as the recent
Great East Japan Earthquake, or can be quickly restored
to operation. This is true even for the information
infrastructure of small and medium sized enterprise(SME). This suggests that an ICT department business
continuity plan (BCP)1, designed to continue operations
under disaster and other emergency situations, isessential to ensure preventative measures to minimize

impact and to quickly restore the most important andmost essential operations.
A survey based study on the the state of cloud usage
by small and medium sized enterprises (2011)2, showedthat about 10% of SMEs “use cloud computing,”
highlighting the urgent problem for R&D andtechnological support for SMEs. Even so, there havebeen almost no academic studies on the relationshipbetween cloud computing and SME information
infrastructure, or on the future direction of this.
A previous investigation on open source information
system research and development for supporting the IT

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strategy of small and medium sized enterprise( [Grantin-Aid for Scientific Research (C))(2008-2010), andproposed a model open source information system tosupport the IT strategy of SMEs, and together with
developing a prototype, considered usage-relatedproblems. Based on the our findings from that research
project, in this study, we consider and design a cloudsystem framework appropriate for small to medium
sized enterprise, and investigate and consider the issues
related to operation and administration.
2. Cloud Systems

In another study of Gartner report called “Survey of2,014 global CIOs,”5 when asked to predict when morethan half of the information processing of the computersof their companies will be moved to the cloud, 53% of
global respondents said “by 2015,” but for Japan, only
25% gave the same response. Nineteen percent of global
respondents said “after 2021” or “not possible tomigrate,” while the response was 43% for Japan. Thisshows that Japan is very late to the game in areas suchas cloud research and cloud implementation.
On the subject of research trends in Japan, otherthan a cloud and public infrastructure study by theInformation-technology Promotion Agency6, most arestudies related to security7.

2.1. Cloud computing
The United States National Institute of Standards andTechnology (NIST) defines “cloud” as a model for
enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network
access to a shared pool of configurable computing
resources, that can be rapidly provisioned and released
with minimal management effort or service provider
interaction3.
Cloud computing includes the following fivecharacteristics:
••
•
•
•

On Demand and Self Services
Broad Network AccessResource PoolingRapid Elasticity
Measured Services

Services can be categorized into the following threeservice types:•••

2.3. Cloud systems
Cloud systems can be categorized as shown in Fig.1. In
particular, depending on the cloud system service
architecture, they are configured according to thefollowing three subsystems: SaaS (Software as aService: functions are provided over the network), PaaS
(Platform as a Service: application development
environment, customization functions are provided overthe network), and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service: evenvirtual machines and operating systems are provided
over the network). For open source cloud system
implementations, OpenStack Compute (Nova) is an
example of a resource toolset, while OpenStack Object
Storage (Swift) is an example of a cloud storage toolset.
Even SMEs can easily use these open source projects todevelop tools that provide functionality similar to(functional compatibility) Google Apps or Amazon EC.

SaaS (Software as a Service: Functionality isdelivered over the network)
PaaS (Platform as a Service ： Application
development environment and customization
features are delivered over the network)
IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service: Even virtualmachines and operating systems are delivered overthe network)
Fig.1. Cloud systems

2.2. Cloud research trends“Above the Clouds: A Berkeley View on Cloud
Computing”4 , a report on the Reliable Adaptive
Distributed Systems Laboratory (RAD Lab) of theUnited States, highlighted ten obstacles facing cloudcomputing, including availability of service, data lockin, and data confidentiality and auditability.

2.4. Amazon EC2
Amazon EC2 is a good example of IaaS. Amazon EC28
stands for “Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud.” It refers
to a web service that presents computing capabilities inthe cloud and that are easily scalable. It can be usedaccording to the following processes.

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••
•

•
•

Immediately launch and execute by selecting apreconfigured template image. Or, create anAmazon Machine Image (AMI) that includes
applications, libraries, data, and related settings.
Configure security and network access on Amazon
EC2.
Select the desired instance type and operating
system, and using web service APIs or the various
administration tools that are provided, start, stopand monitor the AMI instance as much or as little
as needed.
For each instance, decide whether to run frommultiple locations, use a fixed IP end point, or add
robust block storage.
Pricing is based on actual resources consumed,
such as total time the instance was run or amount ofdata transferred.

Of these processes, the AMI selection process is shownin Fig.2.

Fig.3. OpenStack Dashboard

3. RDORDO13 is a community of people using and deploying
OpenStack on Red Hat and Red Hat-based platforms.
Community site openstack.redhat.com of RDO wasestablished like Fig.4.

Fig.2. AMI selection

2.5. OpenStack
OpenStack9 is a representative open source to offer IaaS
type cloud service. OpenStack is IaaS cloud computing
project begun in 2010 by Rackspace Inc10 and NASA
(National Aeronautics and Space Administration)11.
In2012,
nonprofit
organization"OpenStackFoundation"12 was established. A component to operateit in GUI includes OpenStack Dashboard (horizon) toshow it in Fig.3, and OpenStack manages compute,storage, and networking resources. The most recent
version at the time of 2013-11-21 of OpenStack is“OpenStack 2013.2 (Havana)”.

Fig.4. Openstack.redhat.com of RDO

4. A basic cloud model based on OpenStack
4.1. Prototype system
Table 1 shows the specifications of the prototype systemtested in this study.

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In the main portion of the screen, followed by the"Associate Floating IP" link for the instance you justlaunched.

Table 1. Prototype system specifications

Form factor
CPUMemory
Hard disk
OSLinux kernel
Cloud platform
softwareSpace saving desktopIntel Core i3 processor (withvirtualization support)
4GB200GB
CentOS 6.4（x86_64）
2.6.32OpenStack 2013.2 (Havana)• SSH to the Instance$ ssh -l root -i my_key_pair.pem floating_ip_address
The above steps enable an instance to be presented (seeFig.5).

4.2. Installation of the RDO
By installing RDO, the cloud environment can be used
as follows.
• Install of Software repository#sudoyuminstall
http://rdo.fedorapeople.org/openstack/openstackgrizzly/rdo-release-grizzly-3.noarch.rpm-y• Install of the Packstack Installer# sudo yum install -y openstack-packstack• Install of OpenStack using Packstack# packstack –allinone

Fig.5. A running instance

5. Conclusion

Now its single node OpenStack instance is up andrunning.
• Visit the Dashboard
LogintotheOpenstackdashboardat
http://localhost/dashboard - the username is "admin".

An effective cloud system framework suitable for theSMEs has been proposed in this paper. The validity ofsystem implementation and operation has been tested. It
is required to investigate the characteristics related tooperation and administrative issues and to run theprototype system in the near future.

• Enabe SSH
Adding Port "22" on the default security group

Acknowledgements
This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant
Number 24530444.

• Key pair
Create or impor a key pair
• Add an image"Fedora19"in"http://cloud.fedoraproject.org/fedora19.x86_64.qcow2"14the• Launch the instanceIn the main portion of the screen, click the "Launch"button for the "F19" image.
•References
1. Asian Disaster Reduction Center (2012), BCP status ofthe Private Sector in the APEC Region 2012. Report:116,
http://www.adrc.asia/publications/bcp/survey_2012.pdf.
2. Information-technology Promotion Agency (2011),
Factual Investigation on Cloud Usage by Small toMedium Enterprise. Information-technology Promotion
Agency (in Japanese).

Associate Floating IP

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1583. National Institute of Standards and Technology, TheNISTDefinitionofCloud
Computing.
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-145/SP800145.pdf.
4. Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences(University of California at Berkeley), Above the Clouds:
A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing. Technical Report
No.UCB/EECS-2009-28,
http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2009/EEC
S-2009-28.html.
5. Gartner (2011), Worldwide Survey of 2,014 CIOs (InJapanese).
press
release,http://www.gartner.co.jp/press/html/pr20110303-01.html.
6. Information-technology Promotion Agency (2013),
Report – “Research on Cloud Computing and Public
Infrastructure (in Japanese). Information-technology
Promotion Agency, Japan.
7. Y. Hori et. al (2009), Cloud Computing Security
Research Trends (in Japanese). Information Processing
Society of Japan Report CSEC “Computer Security”
2009-CSEC-47(4):1-6.
8. Amazon, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (AmazonEC2). http://aws.amazon.com/jp/ec2/.
9. The OpenStack Foundation, OpenStack Open Source
Cloud Computing Software. http://www.openstack.org/.
10. Rackspace, US Inc., Rackspace: The Leader in Hybrid
Cloud. http://www.rackspace.com/.
11. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA.
http://www.nasa.gov/.
12. The OpenStack Foundation, Foundation » OpenStackOpenSource
CloudComputingSoftware.
http://www.openstack.org/foundation/.
13. Red Hat, Inc., RDO. http://openstack.redhat.com/.
14. The Fedora Project, Fedora Project Homepage.
http://fedoraproject.org/en/.

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