Exploiting BPMN features to design a fault-aware TOSCA orchestrator

Cloud computing is nowadays a consolidated paradigm that enables scalable access to computing resources and complex services. One of the greatest challenges Cloud providers have to deal with is to efficiently automate the service "provisioning" activities through Cloud orchestration techniques. By relying on TOSCA, a well-known standard specification for the interoperable description of Cloud services, we developed a fault-aware orchestrator capable of automating the workflow for service provisioning. The BPMN notation was used to define both the workflow and the data associated with workflow elements. To corroborate the proposal, a software prototype was developed and tested with a sample use case which is discussed in the paper.