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Cyclops: A micro service based approach to
Rating, Charging & Billing for cloud
Presented by: Srikanta Patanjali, [email protected]
Authors: Srikanta Patanjali, Benjamin Truninger, Piyush Harsh & Thomas Michael Bohnert
Organization: Zurich University of Applied Science, Switzerland
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Index
• General definitions
• Need for RCB
• Approach
• Implementation : Service architecture
• Use case : T-Nova
• Further challenges
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Who we are ?
InIT Cloud Computing Lab (ICCLab)
Applied research lab focused on Cloud
Computing and part of Institute of Information &
Technology at Zurich University of Applied
Science, Switzerland
Who we are ?
Website : http://blog.zhaw.ch/icclab/3
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Creation of a generic and reusable framework to
enable the processes of Rating, Charging & Billing
and accomplish convergent billing of different
cloud services.
Problem Statement
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What is Cyclops ?
Cyclops is a generic platform to support converged
billing for a any combination of IaaS, PaaS, SaaS
applications
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Rating, Charging & Billing (RCB)
1. Rating : Process of determining the cost of a unit
resource
2. Charging : Process of price calculation for a user based
on the resource’s consumption quantity and rate.
3. Billing : Process of Invoice generation by combining
discount, SLA penalties & taxes
General definitions
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Need for RCB
● Exponential growth in cloud necessitates
supporting tools & process
● Hybrid cloud ecosystem merits cost
management system
● Enable better revenue collection for cloud
service provider
Need for RCB framework
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Approach
● Architecture : Micro services
● Resource Rate calculation : Rule engine
● Data persistence & integrity : Time Series
optimized DB
● Data accessibility : REST API
Approach
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Implementation
Cyclops : Overall architecture
Architecture
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Usage Data Record Micro service
• Collects user’s usage metrics from IaaS, PaaS,
SaaS
• Accepts events/usage metrics from external
applications
• Normalizes the collected data, intuitive for later
processing
• Persistence of UDR into Time Series Database
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UDR Service : Data persistence
Time Series
Database Time Series
(Resource)
Columns
(Meta,usage)
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UDR Service : Usage Data Record
Usage Data Record
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• Resource usage analytics
• Forecasting the demand and associated
capacity growth using known prediction models
• Visualization of resource usage
UDR Service : Outcomes
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Architecture
Usage Data Record Micro service
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Rating & Charging Micro service
Charge Data Record
• Rule based dynamic rate generation for cloud
resource
• Charge calculation based on resource usage
and rate for a time period
• Persistence of Charge Data Records into Time
Series Database
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Architecture
Rating & Charging Micro service
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• Interface with Service Level Agreement (SLA)
to gather SLA violation penalties
• Consideration of discounts and calculation of
taxes.
• Generation of payable bill amount
• Persistence of the generated bill
Billing Micro service
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Architecture
Billing Micro service
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• Aim : Billing support for NFV marketplace
• Billing Type : Time based
• Actors : Network Function Provider, Service
Provider, End User
• Billing Models
- Pay as You Go (PAYG)
- Revenue Share
- PAYG
- Subscription
Use Case : T-Nova
NF provider & Service
Provider
Service Provider & End
User
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Use Case : T-Nova
Cyclops Framework
Network Function
provider
Network function
Service Provider End User
Service/Bundle Service
Subscription
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Use Case : T-Nova
Accounting Module
UDR Service RC Service Billing Service
Events
UDR CDR
SLA
Violations
Subscription
Fees
Cyclops
Active service
instance
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• Cyclops is a generic & micro services based
Rating, Charging & Billing framework for cloud
• Support for resource based and event based
billing
• Accessibility of generated intermediary data
through REST API
• Persistence of data into time series optimized
database
Summary
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Further challenges
● High availability of the services (reliability)
● Cloud roaming (cloud bursting)
● Achieving seamless connectivity to enable
convergent billing (diverse applications)
● Data normalization to assist integrated billing
(heterogenous data)
● Tackling complex rules for rate generation of
cloud resource (flexible rating policy)
Further Challenges
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License : Apache License v2
Website : http://icclab.github.io/cyclops
Research :
http://blog.zhaw.ch/icclab/category/research-
approach/themes/rating-charging-billing
Access to work & results
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Research work is partially supported by T-Nova
Questions ?
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