An Approach to Ad hoc Cloud Computing

We consider how underused computing resources within an enterprise may be harnessed to improve utilization and create an elastic computing infrastructure. Most current cloud provision involves a data center model, in which clusters of machines are dedicated to running cloud infrastructure software. We propose an additional model, the ad hoc cloud, in which infrastructure software is distributed over resources harvested from machines already in existence within an enterprise. In contrast to the data center cloud model, resource levels are not established a priori, nor are resources dedicated exclusively to the cloud while in use. A participating machine is not dedicated to the cloud, but has some other primary purpose such as running interactive processes for a particular user. We outline the major implementation challenges and one approach to tackling them

On the Fly Orchestration of Unikernels: Tuning and Performance Evaluation of Virtual Infrastructure Managers

Network operators are facing significant challenges meeting the demand for more bandwidth, agile infrastructures, innovative services, while keeping costs low. Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) and Cloud Computing are emerging as key trends of 5G network architectures, providing flexibility, fast instantiation times, support of Commercial Off The Shelf hardware and significant cost savings. NFV leverages Cloud Computing principles to move the data-plane network functions from expensive, closed and proprietary hardware to the so-called Virtual Network Functions (VNFs). In this paper we deal with the management of virtual computing resources (Unikernels) for the execution of VNFs. This functionality is performed by the Virtual Infrastructure Manager (VIM) in the NFV MANagement and Orchestration (MANO) reference architecture. We discuss the instantiation process of virtual resources and propose a generic reference model, starting from the analysis of three open source VIMs, namely OpenStack, Nomad and OpenVIM. We improve the aforementioned VIMs introducing the support for special-purpose Unikernels and aiming at reducing the duration of the instantiation process. We evaluate some performance aspects of the VIMs, considering both stock and tuned versions. The VIM extensions and performance evaluation tools are available under a liberal open source licence

High-Performance Cloud Computing: A View of Scientific Applications

Scientific computing often requires the availability of a massive number of computers for performing large scale experiments. Traditionally, these needs have been addressed by using high-performance computing solutions and installed facilities such as clusters and super computers, which are difficult to setup, maintain, and operate. Cloud computing provides scientists with a completely new model of utilizing the computing infrastructure. Compute resources, storage resources, as well as applications, can be dynamically provisioned (and integrated within the existing infrastructure) on a pay per use basis. These resources can be released when they are no more needed. Such services are often offered within the context of a Service Level Agreement (SLA), which ensure the desired Quality of Service (QoS). Aneka, an enterprise Cloud computing solution, harnesses the power of compute resources by relying on private and public Clouds and delivers to users the desired QoS. Its flexible and service based infrastructure supports multiple programming paradigms that make Aneka address a variety of different scenarios: from finance applications to computational science. As examples of scientific computing in the Cloud, we present a preliminary case study on using Aneka for the classification of gene expression data and the execution of fMRI brain imaging workflow.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures, conference pape

Virtualized Computational Environments on the cloud to foster group skills through PBL: A case study in architecture

The ODISEA platform provides Virtualized Computational Environments (VCEs) on cloud providers as the computational infrastructure to support educational activities. A VCE consists of a collection of one or more Virtual Machines (VMs) to which the students connect from their own computers. In this paper a case study is presented in the architecture domain where a PBL activity is carried out in working groups. The study involves 293 students organized in 28 pilot groups that use customized VCEs created and deployed through the ODISEA platform on a Cloud, and 30 traditional groups that use a LMS platform. The VCE provides the software, hardware and specific configuration to ease the interrelation and cooperative work between the working groups, enhancing the process tracking and feedback gathering as well as providing a better organization of the teaching material. The results demonstrate that the VCE allows to improve the cooperative work, improving the final marks in the PBL developed by the pilot working groups. Also, an economical study is presented, highlighting the economic benefits of the Cloud with respect to raditional physical laboratories of PCs.The authors wish to thank the financial support received from Vicerrectorado de Estudios, Calidad y Acreditacion of the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia (UPV) to develop the PIME project "Entomos Virtuales Computacionales para la Evaluation de Competencias Transversales en la Nube", with reference A04 and to the Ministerio de Economia, Industria y Cornpetitividad for the project BigCLOE (TIN2016-79951-R). GM would like to thank AWS for the AWS Educate program that provides the credits required to support the educational activities.Segrelles Quilis, JD.; Martínez Antón, A.; Castilla-Cabanes, N.; Moltó, G. (2017). Virtualized Computational Environments on the cloud to foster group skills through PBL: A case study in architecture. Computers and Education. 108:131-144. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2017.02.001S13114410

TVET Learning Innovation on Automotive Virtual Laboratory Based on Cloud Openstack

Changes and industrial transformation globally in the era of the industrial revolution 4.0 resulted in technological gaps between the industrial and academic environment, especially in the field of vocational education in automotive engineering. The purpose of this research is to design a virtual laboratory network model that contains the latest material sources from the industry called Virtual Cloud Automotive Laboratory (VCAL). The cloud network model in virtual laboratories is designed such as the Infrastructure as a Services (IaaS) platform, the Platform as a Services (PaaS), Software as a Services (SaaS). The design process is carried out by the PPDIO method, namely Prepare, Plan, Design, Implement, Operate, and Optimize. VCAL is built using open stack software consisting of a database and user interface. The SaaS platform enables industries to share competency and occupational materials for maintenance and repair of light vehicle or automotive engines in the form of 3D view web, video, audio-visual that can be accessed by students, lecturers in enriching aspects of repair and maintenance skills. The test results are limited to Automotive Cloud Virtual Laboratory access done by 10 users simultaneously with different devices, namely PC computers, notebooks, Android smartphones, the results show that the server used can run very well