Blockchain performance optimization using cloud technology
Creators: name: Huang, Zhiqiang
Publisher: name: University of Tasmania
Year: 2024

description: Blockchain, an immutable, decentralized ledger propagated across a peer-to-peer (P2P) network, has gained substantial attention due to its integral security and accountability aspects. Concurrently, cloud computing, a transformative paradigm in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector, offers flexible, on-demand computing services. It plays a crucial role in the evolution of many innovative technologies, including blockchain applications. Despite the increasing adoption of blockchain, its performance issues remain a bottleneck for widespread acceptance. The capabilities of cloud computing can be harnessed to optimize blockchain's full potential. This integration symbolizes the upcoming era of information technology, typified by scalable and secure solutions. The performance benefits of merging blockchain with cloud technology are crucial to understand. <br>This amalgamation can restructure intricate blockchain applications into a pay-per-use service, similar to Blockchain as a Service (BaaS). BaaS, a holistic cloud-based service, empowers customers to design, construct, host, and utilize their tailor-made blockchain applications, such as smart contracts, business functionalities, incentive tokens, among others. The service provider oversees most technical undertakings, ensuring the infrastructure remains functional and agile. BaaS signifies the fusion of blockchain technology and cloud computing, demanding comprehensive investigation into its application models and performance assessment criteria. The quality of service (QoS) for BaaS users is safeguarded through a legal document, the Service Level Agreement (SLA). Current resource management systems do not sufficiently cater to the flexible, affordable service requirements of BaaS users without jeopardizing profitability or market position, primarily focusing on infrastructure or platform levels. Our research addresses these deficiencies through three primary contributions: <br>Firstly, we offer a comprehensive empirical examination for a detailed study of blockchain performance, specifically concentrating on consortium blockchain deployed on the cloud. Our investigation ranges from identifying possible performance bottlenecks to system parameter configuration. We introduce a unique framework for benchmarking blockchain on cloud (BoCB) and implement it using a Hyperledger Fabric application on four commercial Cloud platforms: IBM Cloud, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Our evaluation results provide developers with insights to select the optimal configuration and resources for their applications, demonstrating notable improvement in QoS metrics. <br>Secondly, we conduct a thorough review of cutting-edge blockchain platforms and propose a practical BaaS quality matrix using Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), considering both blockchain and cloud factors. We devise a framework to guide stakeholders in ranking and selecting suitable blockchain services based on specific needs. We simulate different application scenarios, applying various Multiple Attribute Decision Making (MADM) methods in isolation. This framework categorically ranks blockchain services, assessing QoS and prioritizing accordingly. <br>Lastly, building on benchmarking and ranking, we introduce a novel SLA-based resource management system to aid in blockchain deployment on cloud platforms. After scrutinizing BaaS requirements and limitations, our proposed framework automatically fine-tunes the configuration of blockchain applications and reallocates resources in cloud environments to achieve optimal performance. To authenticate the efficacy and efficiency of our proposed framework, we design and execute a real-world case study in a cloud environment. Our findings display substantial improvements in QoS and SLA compliance. In the concluding experiment, we design various experimental scenarios and establish three performance goals at 50%, 100%, and 200% respectively. By modulating cloud resources and configurations, we demonstrate that all these targets can be successfully met using our SLA-based resource management system. <br>To summarize, our research makes three significant technical contributions in the field of blockchain and cloud computing integration. We introduce BoCB, a benchmarking framework that optimizes blockchain performance across four major cloud platforms: IBM Cloud, Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services (AWS). Additionally, we establish a practical BaaS quality matrix using Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to provide an evaluative and ranking mechanism for various blockchain services. Furthermore, we develop an SLA-based resource management system that automates performance optimization. Validated through a real-world case study and a performance goal-oriented experiment, this system demonstrates notable improvements in Quality of Service (QoS) and SLA compliance.