MongoDB Performance In The Cloud

Web applications are growing at a staggering rate every day. As web applications keep getting more complex, their data storage requirements tend to grow exponentially. Databases play an important role in the way web applications store their information. Mongodb is a document store database that does not have strict schemas that RDBMs require and can grow horizontally without performance degradation. MongoDB brings possibilities for different storage scenarios and allow the programmers to use the database as a storage that fits their needs, not the other way around. Scaling MongoDB horizontally requires tens to hundreds of servers, making it very difficult to afford this kind of setup on dedicated hardware. By moving the database into the cloud, this opens up a possibility for low cost virtual machine instances at reasonable prices. There are many cloud services to choose from and without testing performance on each one, there is very little information out there. This paper provides benchmarks on the performance of MongoDB in the cloud

Global Data Plane: A Widely Distributed Storage and Communication Infrastructure

With the advancement of technology, richer computation devices are making their way into everyday life. However, such smarter devices merely act as a source and sink of information; the storage of information is highly centralized in data-centers in today’s world. Even though such data-centers allow for amortization of cost per bit of information, the density and distribution of such data-centers is not necessarily representative of human population density. This disparity of where the information is produced and consumed vs where it is stored only slightly affects the applications of today, but it will be the limiting factor for applications of tomorrow.The computation resources at the edge are more powerful than ever, and present an opportunity to address this disparity. We envision that a seamless combination of these edge-resources with the data-center resources is the way forward. However, the resulting issues of trust and data-security are not easy to solve in a world full of complexity. Toward this vision of a federated infrastructure composed of resources at the edge as well as those in data-centers, we describe the architecture and design of a widely distributed system for data storage and communication that attempts to alleviate some of these data security challenges; we call this system the Global Data Plane (GDP).The key abstraction in the GDP is a secure cohesive container of information called a DataCapsule, which provides a layer of uniformity on top of a heterogeneous infrastructure. A DataCapsule represents a secure history of transactions in a persistent form that can be used for building other applications on top. Existing applications can be refactored to use DataCapsules as the ground truth of persistent state; such a refactoring enables cleaner application design that allows for better security analysis of information flows. Not only cleaner design, the GDP also enables locality of access for performance and data privacy—an ever growing concern in the information age.The DataCapsules are enabled by an underlying routing fabric, called the GDP network, which provides secure routing for datagrams in a flat namespace. The GDP network is a core component of the GDP that enables various GDP components to interact with each other. In addition to the DataCapsules, this underlying network is available to applications for native communication as well. Flat namespace networks are known to provide a number of desirable properties, such as location independence, built-in multicast, etc. However, existing architectures for such networks suffer from routing security issues, typically because malicious entities can claim to possess arbitrary names and thus, receive traffic intended for arbitrary destinations. GDP network takes a different approach by defining an ownership of the name and the associated mechanisms for participants to delegate routing for such names to others. By directly integrating with GDP network, applications can enjoy the benefits of flat namespace networks without compromising routing security.The Global Data Plane and DataCapsules together represent our vision for secure ubiquitous storage. As opposed to the current approach of perimeter security for infrastructure, i.e. drawing a perimeter around parts of infrastructure and trusting everything inside it, our vision is to use cryptographic tools to enable intrinsic security for the information itself regardless of the context in which such information lives. In this dissertation, we show how to make this vision a reality, and how to adapt real world applications to reap the benefits of secure ubiquitous storage

Impact of Electrolysers on the Network

The “Impact of Electrolysers on the Distribution Network” project was commissioned to establish if it is possible to manage the production of hydrogen by electrolysis such that the need for network reinforcement is reduced, delayed or removed, and also to investigate the impact on renewable generation output where electrolysers are integrated with renewable technologies. Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) operated as a partner in the Aberdeen Hydrogen Bus Project which included the design, construction and operation of a Hydrogen Refuelling Station (HRS) located in the Kittybrewster area of Aberdeen.SSEN developed a control system to run trials on the Kittybrewster HRS. Through the trials a series of network scenarios were simulated including demand‐constrained and generation constrained networks. The capacity of the electrolysers to operate flexibly in response to network, generation, and economic signals was also investigated and the outcomes of these trials are contained in this report. Through the development and implementation of these trials it was important to recognise that as the HRS is a fully operational site, the key and overriding requirement was to ensure that enough hydrogen was available to meet the refuelling needs of the ten hydrogen fuel cell buses that were operating across Aberdeen as part of the Aberdeen Hydrogen Bus Project