A First Look at Problems in the Cloud

Cloud computing provides a revolutionary model for the deployment of enterprise applications and Web services alike. In this new model, cloud users save on the cost of purchasing and managing base infrastructure, while the cloud providers save on the cost of maintaining underutilized CPU, memory, and network resources. In migrating to this new model, users face a variety of issues. Commercial clouds provide several support models to aide users in resolving the reported issues This paper arises from our quest to understand how to design IaaS support models for more efficient user troubleshooting. Using a data driven approach, we start our exploration into this issue with an investigation into the problems encountered by users and the methods utilized by the cloud support’s staff to resolve these problems. We examine message threads appearing in the forum of a large IaaS provider over a 3 year period. We argue that the lessons derived from this study point to a set of principles that future IaaS offerings can implement to provide users with a more efficient support model. This data driven approach enables us to propose a set of principles that are pertinent to the experiences of users and that we believe could vastly improve the SLA observed by the users.