An application for integrated resource management in educational cloud

Abstract

Cloud computing is an area of computing that refers to providing customers with highly scalable IT capacities as a service via the Internet. It is an abstract, scalable and controlled computer infrastructure that hosts applications for end-users. Services and data coexist in a shared and dynamically scaled set of resources. E-education systems provide its' users with various services: learning management system, services for scientific research, digital library, academic info services, document management system, decision support systems, services for communication and collaboration, etc. Availability of services depends on the role of the user. In e-learning systems, there are several standard user roles, such as student, teacher, course creator, administrator, etc. In this paper we present an application for integrated resource management in an educational cloud. The application is implemented and used at Laboratory for Electronic Business at University of Belgrade. It is based on web services technologies. The application enables integration of three important components of cloud based e-education infrastructure: Moodle learning management system, directory service LDAP and OpenNebula tool for managing cloud computing infrastructure. The application enables synchronisation of user accounts and privileges managed within Moodle and LDAP and assigning cloud resources and services to specific users. Availability of services which a student can access depends on the Moodle courses he or she is enrolled in.