Leveraging OpenStack and Ceph for a Controlled-Access Data Cloud

While traditional HPC has and continues to satisfy most workflows, a new generation of researchers has emerged looking for sophisticated, scalable, on-demand, and self-service control of compute infrastructure in a cloud-like environment. Many also seek safe harbors to operate on or store sensitive and/or controlled-access data in a high capacity environment. To cater to these modern users, the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute designed and deployed Stratus, a locally-hosted cloud environment powered by the OpenStack platform, and backed by Ceph storage. The subscription-based service complements existing HPC systems by satisfying the following unmet needs of our users: a) on-demand availability of compute resources, b) long-running jobs (i.e., $> 30$ days), c) container-based computing with Docker, and d) adequate security controls to comply with controlled-access data requirements. This document provides an in-depth look at the design of Stratus with respect to security and compliance with the NIH's controlled-access data policy. Emphasis is placed on lessons learned while integrating OpenStack and Ceph features into a so-called "walled garden", and how those technologies influenced the security design. Many features of Stratus, including tiered secure storage with the introduction of a controlled-access data "cache", fault-tolerant live-migrations, and fully integrated two-factor authentication, depend on recent OpenStack and Ceph features.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, PEARC '18: Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing, July 22--26, 2018, Pittsburgh, PA, US

Phenomenology Tools on Cloud Infrastructures using OpenStack

We present a new environment for computations in particle physics phenomenology employing recent developments in cloud computing. On this environment users can create and manage "virtual" machines on which the phenomenology codes/tools can be deployed easily in an automated way. We analyze the performance of this environment based on "virtual" machines versus the utilization of "real" physical hardware. In this way we provide a qualitative result for the influence of the host operating system on the performance of a representative set of applications for phenomenology calculations.Comment: 25 pages, 12 figures; information on memory usage included, as well as minor modifications. Version to appear in EPJ

End-to-end 5G service deployment and orchestration in optical networks with QoE guarantees

© 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other worksThe upcoming 5G deployments will impose stringent requirements. Optical networks control and resource orchestration is set to potentially turn into software-defined approaches in order to address such requirements. As a result, there rises a need for an architectural scheme capable of supporting the different types of services defined for 5G verticals.We present in this paper an architecture enabling end-to-end (E2E) provisioning and monitoring of such 5G services over optical network segments. In particular, the scenario considers the coordination of various optical enabled network segments by a higher level E2E Orchestrator, which provides of network slice deployment and is able to guarantee agreed levels of Quality of Experience (QoE). Moreover, we discuss an example of 5G service provisioning using the proposed architecture to demonstrate its behaviour in front of different network events.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Live-Migration in Cloud Computing Environment

O tráfego global de IP aumentou cinco vezes nos últimos cinco anos, e prevê-se que crescerá três vezes nos próximos cinco. Já para o período de 2013 a 2018, anteviu-se que o total do tráfego de IP iria aumentar a sua taxa composta de crescimento anual (CAGR) em, aproximadamente, 3.9 vezes. Assim, os Prestadores de Serviços estão a sofrer com este acréscimo exponencial, que é proveniente do número abismal de dispositivos e utilizadores que estão ligados à Internet, bem como das suas exigências por vários recursos e serviços de rede (como por exemplo, distribuição de conteúdo multimédia, segurança, mobilidade, etc.). Mais especificamente, estes estão com dificuldades em: introduzir novos serviços geradores de receitas; e otimizar e adaptar as suas infraestruturas mais caras, centros de processamento de dados, e redes empresariais e de longa distância (COMpuTIN, 2015). Estas redes continuam a ter sérios problemas (no que toca a agilidade, gestão, mobilidade e no tempo despendido para se adaptarem), que não foram corrigidos até ao momento. Portanto, foram propostos novos modelos de Virtualização de Funções da Rede (NFV) e tecnologias de Redes de Software Definidos (SDN) para solucionar gastos operacionais e de capital não otimizado, e limitações das redes (Lopez, 2014, Hakiri and Berthou, 2015). Para se ultrapassar tais adversidades, o Instituto Europeu de Normas de Telecomunicações (ETSI) e outras organizações propuseram novas arquiteturas de rede. De acordo com o ETSI, a NFV é uma técnica emergente e poderosa, com grande aplicabilidade, e com o objetivo de transformar a maneira como os operadores desenham as redes. Isto é alcançado pela evolução da tecnologia padrão de virtualização TI, de forma a consolidar vários tipos de equipamentos de redes como: servidores de grande volume, routers, switches e armazenamento (Xilouris et al., 2014). Nesta dissertação, foram usadas as soluções mais atuais de SDN e NFV, de forma a produzir um caso de uso que possa solucionar o crescimento do tráfego de rede e a excedência da sua capacidade máxima. Para o desenvolvimento e avalização da solução, foi instalada a plataforma de computação na nuvem OpenStack, de modo a implementar, gerir e testar um caso de uso de Live Migration.Global IP traffic has increased fivefold over the past five years, and will continue increasing threefold over the next five years. The overall IP traffic will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) nearly 3.9-fold from 2013 to 2018. Service Providers are experiencing the exponential growth of IP traffic that comes from the incredible increased number of devices and users who are connected to the internet along with their demands for various resources and network services like multimedia content distribution, security, mobility and else. Therefore, Service Providers are finding difficult to introduce new revenue generating services, optimize and adapt their expensive infrastructures, data centers, wide-area networks and enterprise networks (COMpuTIN, 2015). The networks continue to have serious known problems, such as, agility, manageability, mobility and time-to-application that have not been successfully addressed so far. Thus, novel Network Function Virtualization (NFV) models and Software-defined Networking (SDN) technologies have been proposed to solve the non-optimal capital and operational expenditures and network’s limitations (Lopez, 2014, Hakiri and Berthou, 2015). In order to solve these issues, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and other standard organizations are proposing new network architecture approaches. According to ETSI, The Network Functions Virtualization is a powerful emerging technique with widespread applicability, aiming to transform the way that network operators design networks by evolving standard IT virtualization technology to consolidate many network equipment types: high volume servers, routers, switches and storage (Xilouris et al., 2014). In this thesis, the current Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) solutions were used in order to make a use case that can address the increasing of network traffic and exceeding its maximum capacity. To develop and evaluate the solution, OpenStack cloud computing platform was installed in order to deploy, manage and test a Live-Migration use-case