Anthony Sulistio

Private cloud for collaboration and e-Learning services: from IaaS to SaaS

The idea behind cloud computing is to deliver Infrastructure-, Platform- and Software-as-a-Service (IaaS, PaaS and SaaS) over the Internet on an easy pay-per-use business model. The Hochschule Furtwangen University (HFU) is running their own private cloud infrastructure, called Cloud Infrastructure and Application CloudIA. The targeted users of the CloudIA project are HFU staff and students running e-Learning applications, and external people for collaboration purposes. Therefore, in this paper, we introduce our work in building a private cloud. More specifically, this paper shows how our cloud offerings in each of the cloud service models, i.e. IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, address the requirements and needs of e-Learning and collaboration in an university environment.

A taxonomy of computer-based simulations and its mapping to parallel and distributed systems simulation tools

In recent years, extensive research has been conducted in the area of simulation to model large complex systems and understand their behavior, especially in parallel and distributed systems. At the same time, a variety of design principles and approaches for computer‐based simulation have evolved. As a result, an increasing number of simulation tools have been designed and developed. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to develop a comprehensive taxonomy for design of computer‐based simulations, and apply this taxonomy to categorize and analyze various simulation tools for parallel and distributed systems. Copyright

ViteraaS: Virtual Cluster as a Service

The idea behind cloud computing is to deliver Infrastructure-, Platform- and Software-as-a-Service (IaaS, PaaS and SaaS) over the network on an easy pay-per-use business model. In this paper, we present our work, Virtual Cluster as a Service (ViteraaS), that provides on-demand high performance computing for research projects, and e-Learning and teaching purposes in a private cloud. Moreover, ViteraaS can be extended to use Amazons public cloud infrastructure as needed. ViteraaS can be categorized as PaaS that leverages Open Nebula, a virtual infrastructure manager, to dynamically create a cluster of virtual machines (VMs) on idle resources or dedicated servers. In addition, ViteraaS is integrated within the universitys existing IT infrastructure like Single Sign-On for seamless authentication and authorization. Finally, a Quality of Service monitoring module is used by ViteraaS to monitor the performance and status of these VMs.

On incorporating differentiated levels of network service into GridSim

Grid computing technologies are increasingly being used to aggregate computing resources that are geographically distributed. Commercial networks are being used to connect these resources, and thus serve as a fundamental component of Grid computing. Since these Grid resources are connected over a shared infrastructure, it is essential that we consider the effects of using this shared infrastructure during simulations. In this paper, we discuss how new additions to the GridSim simulation toolkit can be used to explore network effects in Grid computing. We also investigate techniques to incorporate differentiated levels of service, background traffic and the collection of information from the network during runtime in GridSim. As a result, these features enable GridSim to realistically model Grid computing experiments.

Managing Cancellations and No-Shows of Reservations with Overbooking to Increase Resource Revenue

Advance reservation allows users to request available nodes in the future, whereas economy provides an incentive for resource owners to be part of the Grid, and encourages users to utilize resources optimally and effectively. In this paper, we use overbooking models from Revenue Management to manage cancellations and no-shows of reservations in a Grid system. Without overbooking, the resource owners are faced with a prospect of loss of income and lower system utilization. Thus, the models aim to find an ideal limit that exceeds the maximum capacity, without incurring greater compensation cost. Moreover, we introduce several novel strategies for selecting which bookings to deny, based on compensation cost and user class level, namely Lottery, Denied Cost First (DCF), and Lower Class DCF. The result shows that by overbooking reservations, a resource gains an extra 6-9% in the total net revenue.

Service and Utility Oriented Distributed Computing Systems: Challenges and Opportunities for Modeling and Simulation Communities

Summary form only given. Grids and peer-to-peer (P2P) networks have emerged as popular platforms for the next generation parallel and distributed computing. In these environments, resources are geographically distributed, managed and owned by various organizations with different policies, and interconnected by wide-area networks or the Internet. This introduces a number of resource management and application scheduling challenges in the domain of security, resource and policy heterogeneity, fault tolerance, and dynamic resource conditions. In these dynamic distributed computing environments, it is hard and challenging to carry out resource management design studies in a repeatable and controlled manner as resources and users are autonomous and distributed across multiple organizations with their own policies. Therefore, simulations have emerged as the most feasible technique for analyzing policies for resource allocation. This paper presents emerging trends in distributed computing and their promises for revolutionizing the computing field, and identifies distinct characteristics and challenges in building them. We motivate opportunities for modeling and simulation communities and present our discrete-event grid simulation toolkit, called GridSim, used by researchers world-wide for investigating the design of utility-oriented computing systems such as data centers and grids. We present various case studies on the use of GridSim in modeling and simulation of business grids, parallel applications scheduling, workflow scheduling, and service pricing and revenue management.

Designing Cloud Services Adhering to Government Privacy Laws

Cloud computing delivers on-demand services with ???exibility and scalability on a simple pay-per-use basis. However, major concerns regarding to security and privacy hinder a broad adoption by users, especially small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This is because existing guidelines, IT standards and laws on security and privacy do not take virtual environments into account. Thus, they present a significant challenge for cloud providers to comply with. As a result, the cloud providers are unable to provide SMEs with an assurance. In order to address these privacy and security issues, this paper presents the Cloud Data Security (CloudDataSec) project that aims to design cloud services adhering to government privacy laws. In particular, this paper introduces a six-layer security model for cloud computing and three level of security assurance for SMEs to take advantage of. Finally, Security Management as a Service (SMaaS) modules, as proposed in this paper, enable users to apply necessary security and privacy operations, based on the sensitivity of their data.

A time optimization algorithm for scheduling bag-of-task applications in auction-based proportional share systems

Grid and peer-to-peer (P2P) network technologies enable aggregation of distributed resources for solving large-scale and computationally-intensive applications. These technologies are well-suited for bag-of-tasks (BoT) applications, because each application consists of many parallel and independent tasks. With multiple users competing for the same resources, the key challenge is to finish a user application within a specified deadline. In this paper, we propose a time optimization algorithm that schedules a user application on auction-based resource allocation systems. These allocation systems, which are based on proportional share, allow users to bid higher in order to gain more resource shares. Therefore, this algorithm adjusts a user bid periodically on these systems in order to finish the application on time.

Cloud Infrastructure & Applications --- CloudIA

The idea behind Cloud Computing is to deliver Infrastructure-as-a-Services and Software-as-a-Service over the Internet on an easy pay-per-use business model. To harness the potentials of Cloud Computing for e-Learning and research purposes, and to small- and medium-sized enterprises, the Hochschule Furtwangen University establishes a new project, called Cloud Infrastructure & Applications (CloudIA). The CloudIA project is a market-oriented cloud infrastructure that leverages different virtualization technologies, by supporting Service-Level Agreements for various service offerings. This paper describes the CloudIA project in details and mentions our early experiences in building a private cloud using an existing infrastructure.

Extending GridSim with an architecture for failure detection

Grid technologies are emerging as the next generation of distributed computing, allowing the aggregation of resources that are geographically distributed across different locations. However, these resources are independent and managed separately by various organizations with different policies. This will have a major impact to users who submit their jobs to the Grid, as they have to deal with issues such as policy heterogeneity, security and fault tolerance. Moreover, the changes of Grid conditions, such as resources that may become unavailable for a period of time due to maintenance and/or suffer failures, would significantly affect the quality of service (QoS) requirements of users. Therefore, it is essential for users to take into account the effects of resource failures during jobs execution. In this paper, we present our work on introducing resource failures and failure detection into the GridSim simulation toolkit. As we need to conduct repeatable and controlled experiments, it is easier to use simulation as a means of studying complex scenarios. We also give a detailed description of the overall design and a use case scenario demonstrating the conditions of resources varied over time.