Although the most widespread public and private IaaS cloud solutions are quite similar in terms of the services provided, their internal structure, as well as their configuration and management options are very different. This may cause unforeseen difficulties upon changing cloud providers. The vendor lock-in problem would be avoidable if the cloud applications and management frameworks would have been assembled over a model that is independent of the actual infrastructure provider and adapted to the underlying system later.

In our research, we are focusing on open-source private IaaS cloud solutions. Our goal is to establish a unified metamodel that allows us to model all essential functions and managed virtual infrastructure elements that these cloud systems provide. We have identified the key functional areas that every cloud framework must support. In each area, we investigate the existing solutions and possible new approaches that eventually lead to the creation of a unified and possibly ideal metamodel.

The presentation aims to unfold the motivational factors behind the creation of such a metamodel and to present the current state of the research.