Cloud Computing – Issues, Research and Implementations
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Journal of Computing and Information Technology - CIT 16, 2008, 4, 235–246 235 doi:10.2498/cit.1001391 Cloud Computing – Issues, Research and Implementations Mladen A. Vouk Department of Computer Science, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA “Cloud” computing – a relatively recent term, builds on based on Virtual Computing Laboratory (VCL) decades of research in virtualization, distributed com- technology. VCL has been in production use at puting, utility computing, and more recently networking, web and software services. It implies a service oriented NC State University since 2004, and is a suitable architecture, reduced information technology overhead vehicle for dynamic implementation of almost for the end-user, great flexibility, reduced total cost of any current “cloud” computing solution. Sec- ownership, on-demand services and many other things. This paper discusses the concept of “cloud” computing, tion 4 discusses “cloud”-related research and some of the issues it tries to address, related research engineering challenges. Section 5 summarizes topics, and a “cloud” implementation available today. and concludes the paper. Keywords: “cloud” computing, virtual computing lab, virtualization, utility computing, end-to-end quality of service 2. Cloud Computing A key differentiating element of a successful 1. Introduction information technology (IT) is its ability to be- come a true, valuable, and economical contrib- [ ] “Cloud computing” is the next natural step in utor to cyberinfrastructure 4 . “Cloud” com- the evolution of on-demand information tech- puting embraces cyberinfrastructure, and builds nology services and products. To a large extent, upon decades of research in virtualization, dis- cloud computing will be based on virtualized tributed computing, “grid computing”, utility resources. computing, and, more recently, networking, web and software services. It implies a service- Cloud computing predecessors have been around oriented architecture, reduced information tech- for some time now [1, 12, 15, 17, 18, 24, 29, 30, nology overhead for the end-user, greater flex- 35, 40], but the term became “popular” some- ibility, reduced total cost of ownership, on- time in October 2007 when IBM and Google an- demand services and many other things. nounced a collaboration in that domain [27, 22]. This was followed by IBM’s announcement of the “Blue Cloud” effort [23]. Since then, every- 2.1. Cyberinfrastructure one is talking about “Cloud Computing”. Of course, there also is the inevitable Wikipedia [ ] “Cyberinfrastructure makes applications dra- entry 45 . matically easier to develop and deploy, thus This paper discusses the concept of “cloud” expanding the feasible scope of applications computing, some of the issues it tries to address, possible within budget and organizational con- related research topics, and a “cloud” imple- straints, and shifting the scientist’s and engi- mentation available today. Section 2 discusses neer’s effort away from information technology concepts and components of “cloud” comput- development and concentrating it on scientific ing. Section 3 describes an implementation and engineering research. Cyberinfrastructure 236 Cloud Computing – Issues, Research and Implementations also increases efficiency, quality, and reliability services. It is expected that in the next 10 years, by capturing commonalities among application service-based solutions will be a major vehicle needs, and facilitates the efficient sharing of for delivery of information and other IT-assisted equipment and services.”[5] functions at both individual and organizational Today, almost any business or major activity levels, e.g., software applications, web-based uses, or relies in some form, on IT and IT ser- services, personal and business “desktop” com- vices. These services need to be enabling and puting, high-performance computing. appliance-like, and there must be an economy- of-scale for the total-cost-of-ownership to be better than it would be without cyberinfras- 2.2.2. Components tructure. Technology needs to improve end- user productivity and reduce technology-driven The key to a SOA framework that supports overhead. For example, unless IT is the primary workflows is componentization of its services, business of an organization, less than 20% of an ability to support a range of couplings among its efforts not directly connected to its primary workflow building blocks, fault-tolerance in its business should have to do with IT overhead, data- and process-aware service-based delivery, even though 80% of its business might be con- and an ability to audit processes, data and re- ducted using electronic means. sults, i.e., collect and use provenance informa- tion. 2.2. Concepts Component-based approach is characterized by [13, 28] reusability (elements can be re-used in other workflows), substitutability (alterna- A powerful underlying and enabling concept tive implementations are easy to insert, very is computing through service-oriented architec- precisely specified interfaces are available, run- tures (SOA) –deliveryofanintegratedand time component replacement mechanisms exist, orchestrated suite of functions to an end-user there is ability to verify and validate substitu- through composition of both loosely and tightly ) ( coupled functions, or services – often network- tions, etc. , extensibility and scalability ability based. Related concepts are component-based to readily extend system component pool and system engineering, orchestration of different to scale it, increase capabilities of individual services through workflows, and virtualization. components, have an extensible and scalable ar- chitecture that can automatically discover new functionalities and resources, etc.), customiz- 2.2.1. Service-oriented Architecture ability (ability to customize generic features to the needs of a particular scientific domain and SOA is not a new concept, although it again has problem),andcomposability (easy construction been receiving considerable attention in recent of more complex functional solutions using ba- years [9, 25, 38]. Examples of some of the sic components, reasoning about such composi- first network-based service-oriented architec- tions, etc.). There are other characteristics that tures are remote procedure calls (RPC),DCOM also are very important. Those include relia- and Object Request Brokers (ORBs) based on bility and availability of the components and the CORBA specifications [32, 33].Amore services, the cost of the services, security,total recent example are the so called “Grid Comput- cost of ownership, economy of scale, and so on. [ ] ing” architectures and solutions 15, 17, 18 . In the context of cloud computing we distin- In an SOA environment, end-users request an guish many categories of components: from IT service (or an integrated collection of such differentiated and undifferentiated hardware, to services) at the desired functional, quality and general purpose and specialized software and capacity level, and receive it either at the time applications, to real and virtual “images”, to en- requested or at a specified later time. Service vironments, to no-root differentiated resources, discovery, brokering, and reliability are impor- to workflow-based environments and collec- tant, and services are usually designed to inter- tions of services, and so on. They are discussed operate, as are the composites made of these later in the paper. Cloud Computing – Issues, Research and Implementations 237 2.2.3. Workflows 2.2.4. Virtualization An integrated view of service-based activities is Virtualization is another very useful concept. It provided by the concept of a workflow. An IT- allows abstraction and isolation of lower level assisted workflow represents a series of struc- tured activities and computations that arise in functionalities and underlying hardware. This enables portability of higher level functions and information-assisted problem solving. Work- / flows have been drawing enormous attention in sharing and or aggregation of the physical re- the database and information systems research sources. [ ] and development communities 16, 20 . Simi- The virtualization concept has been around in larly, the scientific community has developed a some form since 1960s (e.g., in IBM main- number of problem solving environments, most frame systems). Since then, the concept has of them as integrated solutions [19]. Scientific matured considerably and it has been applied workflows merge advances in these two areas to automate support for sophisticated scientific to all aspects of computing – memory, storage, problem solving [28, 42]. processors, software, networks, as well as ser- vices that IT offers. It is the combination of A workflow can be represented by a directed the growing needs and the recent advances in graph of data flows that connect loosely and the IT architectures and solutions that is now tightly coupled (and often asynchronous) pro- bringing the virtualization to the true commod- cessing components. One such graph is shown ity level. Virtualization, through its economy in Figure 1. It illustrates a Kepler-based im- of scale, and its ability to offer very advanced plementation of a part of a fusion simulation [ ] and complex IT services at a reasonable cost, workflow 2, 8 . is poised to become, along with wireless and In the context of “cloud computing”, the key highly distributed and pervasive computing de- questions should be whether the underlying vices, such as sensors