Self-Contained Service Deployment Packages

Complex applications are typically composed of multiple components. In order to install these components all their dependencies need to be satisfied. Typically these dependencies are resolved, downloaded, and installed during the deployment time and in the target environment, e.g., using package manager of the operating system. However, under some circumstances this approach is not applicable, e.g., if the access to the Internet is limited or non-existing at all. For instance, Industry 4.0 environments often have no Internet access for security reasons. Thus, in these cases, deployment packages without external dependencies are required that already contain everything required to deploy the software. In this paper, we present an approach enabling the transformation of non-self-contained deployment packages into self-contained deployment packages. Furthermore, we present a method for developing self-contained deployment packages systematically. The practical feasibility is validated by a prototypical implementation following our proposed system architecture. Moreover, our prototype is evaluated by provisioning a LAMP stack using the open-source ecosystem OpenTOSCA.