HEPCloud, a New Paradigm for HEP Facilities: CMS Amazon Web Services Investigation

Historically, high energy physics computing has been performed on large purpose-built computing systems. These began as single-site compute facilities, but have evolved into the distributed computing grids used today. Recently, there has been an exponential increase in the capacity and capability of commercial clouds. Cloud resources are highly virtualized and intended to be able to be flexibly deployed for a variety of computing tasks. There is a growing nterest among the cloud providers to demonstrate the capability to perform large-scale scientific computing. In this paper, we discuss results from the CMS experiment using the Fermilab HEPCloud facility, which utilized both local Fermilab resources and virtual machines in the Amazon Web Services Elastic Compute Cloud. We discuss the planning, technical challenges, and lessons learned involved in performing physics workflows on a large-scale set of virtualized resources. In addition, we will discuss the economics and operational efficiencies when executing workflows both in the cloud and on dedicated resources.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figure

Workload characterization and customer interaction at e-commerce web servers

Electronic commerce servers have a significant presence in today's Internet. Corporations want to maintain high availability, sufficient capacity, and satisfactory performance for their E-commerce Web systems, and want to provide satisfactory services to customers. Workload characterization and the analysis of customers' interactions with Web sites are the bases upon which to analyze server performance, plan system capacity, manage system resources, and personalize services at the Web site. To date, little empirical evidence has been discovered that identifies the characteristics for Web workloads of E-commerce systems and the behaviours of customers. This thesis analyzes the Web access logs at public Web sites for three organizations: a car rental company, an IT company, and the Computer Science department of the University of Saskatchewan. In these case studies, the characteristics of Web workloads are explored at the request level, functionlevel, resource level, and session level; customers' interactions with Web sites are analyzed by identifying and characterizing session groups. The main E-commerce Web workload characteristics and performance implications are: i) The requests for dynamic Web objects are an important part of the workload. These requests should be characterized separately since the system processes them differently; ii) Some popular image files, which are embedded in the same Web page, are always requested together. If these files are requested and sent in a bundle, a system will greatly reduce the overheads in processing requests for these files; iii) The percentage of requests for each Web page category tends to be stable in the workload when the time scale is large enough. This observation is helpful in forecasting workload composition; iv) the Secure Socket Layer protocol (SSL) is heavily used and most Web objects are either requested primarily through SSL or primarily not through SSL; and v) Session groups of different characteristics are identified for all logs. The analysis of session groups may be helpful in improving system performance, maximizing revenue throughput of the system, providing better services to customers, and managing and planning system resources. A hybrid clustering algorithm, which is a combination of the minimum spanning tree method and k-means clustering algorithm, is proposed to identify session clusters. Session clusters obtained using the three session representations Pages Requested, Navigation Pattern, and Resource Usage are similar enough so that it is possible to use different session representations interchangeably to produce similar groupings. The grouping based on one session representation is believed to be sufficient to answer questions in server performance, resource management, capacity planning and Web site personalization, which previously would have required multiple different groupings. Grouping by Pages Requested is recommended since it is the simplest and data on Web pages requested is relatively easy to obtain in HTTP logs

Web Portal for Kashmir Tourism Industry:Design Guidelines

Tourism is a dynamic and competitive industry that requires the ability to constantly adapt to customers\u27 changing needs and desires, as the customer satisfaction, safety and enjoyment are particularly the focus of tourism business. Developments in search engines, carrying capacity and speed of networks have influenced travelers around the globe to use technologies for planning and experiencing their travels. Tourism uses Internet marketing and Web portals by utilizing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and ICT enabled services in order to gather and/or disseminate information and ease online booking and reservations. In this article an attempt has been made to identify the requirements of efficient Web portal for Kashmir Tourism Industry. This article provides a complete series of design guidelines vis-Ã -vis Web Portal strategy, structure, design, architecture, level of facilitation and features, Technologies and tools and process model for its successful implementation

Patient attributes warranting consideration in clinical practice guidelines, health workforce planning and policy

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>In order for clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) to meet their broad objective of enhancing the quality of care and supporting improved patient outcomes, they must address the needs of diverse patient populations. We set out to explore the patient attributes that are likely to demand a unique approach to the management of chronic disease, and which are crucial if evidence or services planning is to reflect clinic populations. These were incorporated into a new conceptual framework; using diabetes mellitus as an exemplar.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The patient attributes that informed the framework were identified from CPGs, the diabetes literature, an expert academic panel, and two cross-disciplinary panels; and agreed upon using a modified nominal group technique.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Full consensus was reached on twenty-four attributes. These factors fell into one of three themes: (1) type/stage of disease, (2) morbid events, and (3) factors impacting on capacity to self-care. These three themes were incorporated in a convenient way in the workforce evidence-based (WEB) model.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>While biomedical factors are frequently recognised in published clinical practice guidelines, little attention is given to attributes influencing a person's capacity to self-care. Paying explicit attention to predictable threats to effective self-care in clinical practice guidelines, by drawing on the WEB model, may assist in refinements that would address observed disparities in health outcomes across socio-economic groups. The WEB model also provides a framework to inform clinical training, and health services and workforce planning and research; including the assessment of healthcare needs, and the allocation of healthcare resources.</p

Performance Analysis of 3G Communication Network

In this project, third generation (3G) technologies research had been carried out to design and optimization conditions for 3G network. The 3G wireless mobile communication networks are growing at an ever faster rate, and this is likely to continue in the foreseeable future. Some services such as e-mail, web browsing etc allow the transition of the network from circuit switched to packet switched operation, resulting in increased overall network performance. Higher reliability, better coverage and services, higher capacity, mobility management, and wireless multimedia are all parts of the network performance. Throughput and spectral efficiency are fundamental parameters in capacity planning for 3G cellular network deployments. This project investigates also the downlink (DL) and uplink (UL) throughput and spectral efficiency performance of the standard Universal Mobile Telecommunications system (UMTS) system for different scenarios of user and different technologies. Power consumption comparison for different mobile technology is also discussed. The analysis can significantly help system engineers to obtain crucial performance characteristics of 3G network. At the end of the paper, coverage area of 3G from one of the mobile network in Malaysia is presented

Planning and real-time management of smart grids with high PV penetration in Italy

For planning and development and in real-time operation of smart grids, it is important to evaluate the impacts of photovoltaic (PV) distributed generation. In this paper, we present an integrated platform, constituted by two main components: a PV simulator and a real-time distribution network simulator. The first, designed and developed following the microservice approach and providing REST web services, simulates real-sky solar radiation on rooftops and estimates the PV energy production; the second, based on a digital real-time power systems simulator, simulates the behaviour of the electric network under the simulated generation scenarios. The platform is tested on a case study based on real data for a district of the city of Turin, Italy. In the results, we show possible applications of the platform for power flow forecasting during real-time operation and to detect possible voltage and transformers capacity problems during planning due to high penetration of Renewable Energy Sources. In particular, the results show that the case study distribution network, in the actual configuration, is not ready to accommodate all the generation capacity that can be installed as, in certain hours of the day and in certain days of the year, the capacity of some transformers is exceeded

ARTS and CRAFTS: Predictive Scaling for Request-based Services in the Cloud

Modern web services can see well over a billion requests per day. Data and services at such scale require advanced software and large amounts of computational resources to process requests in reasonable time. Advancements in cloud computing now allow us to acquire additional resources faster than in traditional capacity planning scenarios. Companies can scale systems up and down as required, allowing them to meet the demand of their customers without having to purchase their own expensive hardware. Unfortunately, these, now routine, scaling operations remain a primarily manual task. To solve this problem, we present CRAFTS (Cloud Resource Anticipation For Timing Scaling), a system for automatically identifying application throughput and predictive scaling of cloud computing resources based on historical data. We also present ARTS (Automated Request Trace Simulator), a request based workload generation tool for constructing diverse and realistic request patterns for modern web applications. ARTS allows us to evaluate CRAFTS\u27 algorithms on a wide range of scenarios. In this thesis, we outline the design and implementation of both ARTS and CRAFTS and evaluate the effectiveness of various prediction algorithms applied to real-world request data and artificial workloads generated by ARTS

An evidence-based health workforce model for primary and community care

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The delivery of best practice care can markedly improve clinical outcomes in patients with chronic disease. While the provision of a skilled, multidisciplinary team is pivotal to the delivery of best practice care, the occupational or skill mix required to deliver this care is unclear; it is also uncertain whether such a team would have the capacity to adequately address the complex needs of the clinic population. This is the role of needs-based health workforce planning. The objective of this article is to describe the development of an evidence-informed, needs-based health workforce model to support the delivery of best-practice interdisciplinary chronic disease management in the primary and community care setting using diabetes as a case exemplar.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>Development of the workforce model was informed by a strategic review of the literature, critical appraisal of clinical practice guidelines, and a consensus elicitation technique using expert multidisciplinary clinical panels. Twenty-four distinct patient attributes that require unique clinical competencies for the management of diabetes in the primary care setting were identified. Patient attributes were grouped into four major themes and developed into a conceptual model: the Workforce Evidence-Based (WEB) planning model. The four levels of the WEB model are (1) promotion, prevention, and screening of the general or high-risk population; (2) type or stage of disease; (3) complications; and (4) threats to self-care capacity. Given the number of potential combinations of attributes, the model can account for literally millions of individual patient types, each with a distinct clinical team need, which can be used to estimate the total health workforce requirement.</p> <p>Summary</p> <p>The WEB model was developed in a way that is not only reflective of the diversity in the community and clinic populations but also parsimonious and clear to present and operationalize. A key feature of the model is the classification of subpopulations, which gives attention to the particular care needs of disadvantaged groups by incorporating threats to self-care capacity. The model can be used for clinical, health services, and health workforce planning.</p

Community Development Evaluation Storymap and Legend

Community based organizations, funders, and intermediary organizations working in the community development field have a shared interest in building stronger organizations and stronger communities. Through evaluation these organizations can learn how their programs and activities contribute to the achievement of these goals, and how to improve their effectiveness and the well-being of their communities. Yet, evaluation is rarely seen as part of a non-judgemental organizational learning process. Instead, the term "evaluation" has often generated anxiety and confusion. The Community Development Storymap project is a response to those concerns.Illustrations found in this document were produced by Grove Consultants