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O. Shabelnyk:
"Updating Service-based Software Systems in Air-Gapped Environments";
Supervisor: S. Dustdar, C. Tsigkanos, P. Frangoudis; Institute of Information Systems Engineering, Distributed Systems Group, 2021; final examination: 2021-06-23.

Contemporary component-based systems often manifest themselves as service-based architectures, where a central activity is the management of their software updates. However, stringent security constraints in mission-critical settings often impose compulsory network isolation among systems, also known as an air gap; a prevalent choice in different sectors including private, public or governmental organizations. This raises several issues involving updates, stemming from the fact that controlling the update procedure of a distributed service-based system centrally and remotely is precluded by network isolation policies. A dedicated software architecture is thus required, where key themes are: dependability of the update process, interoperability with respect to the software supported and auditability regarding update actions previously performed.We adopt an architectural viewpoint and present a technical framework for updating service-based systems in air-gapped environments. We describe the particularities of the domain characterized by network isolation and provide suitable notations for service versions, whereupon satisfiability is leveraged for dependency resolution; those are situated within an overall architectural design. Finally, we evaluate the proposed framework over a real case study of an international organization, and assess the performance of the dependency resolution procedures for practical problem sizes.

software updates; software versioning; SMT; SOA; air gap; international organisation; case study; Docker; microservice-based architecture

http://dx.doi.org/10.34726/hss.2021.82645