Rao Mikkilineni

Next Generation Cloud Computing Architecture: Enabling Real-Time Dynamism for Shared Distributed Physical Infrastructure

Cloud computing is fundamentally altering the expectations for how and when computing, storage and networking resources should be allocated, managed and consumed. End-users are increasingly sensitive to the latency of services they consume. Service Developers want the Service Providers to ensure or provide the capability to dynamically allocate and manage resources in response to changing demand patterns in real-time. Ultimately, Service Providers are under pressure to architect their infrastructure to enable real-time end-to-end visibility and dynamic resource management with fine grained control to reduce total cost of ownership while also improving agility. The current approaches to enabling real-time, dynamic infrastructure are inadequate, expensive and not scalable to support consumer mass-market requirements. Over time, the server-centric infrastructure management systems have evolved to become a complex tangle of layered systems designed to automate systems administration functions that are knowledge and labor intensive. This expensive and non-real time paradigm is ill suited for a world where customers are demanding communication, collaboration and commerce at the speed of light. Thanks to hardware assisted virtualization, and the resulting decoupling of infrastructure and application management, it is now possible to provide dynamic visibility and control of services management to meet the rapidly growing demand for cloud-based services. What is needed is a rethinking of the underlying operating system and management infrastructure to accommodate the ongoing transformation of the data center from the traditional server-centric architecture model to a cloud or network-centric model. This paper proposes and describes a reference model for a network-centric datacenter infrastructure management stack that borrows and applies key concepts that have enabled dynamism, scalability, reliability and security in the telecom industry, to the computing industry. Finally, the paper will describe a proof-of-concept system that was implemented to demonstrate how dynamic resource management can be implemented to enable real-time service assurance for network centric datacenter architecture.

Designing a New Class of Distributed Systems

Designing a New Class of Distributed Systems closely examines the Distributed Intelligent Managed Element (DIME) Computing Model, a new model for distributed systems, and provides a guide to implementing Distributed Managed Workflows with High Reliability, Availability, Performance and Security. The book also explores the viability of self-optimizing, self-monitoring autonomous DIME-based computing systems. Designing a New Class of Distributed Systems is designed for practitioners as a reference guide for innovative distributed systems design. Researchers working in a related field will also find this book valuable.

Policy-Based Event-Driven Services-Oriented Architecture for Cloud Services Operation & Management

Cloud based services, by their nature, are distributed and traditional operation and management processes that often exert centralized control are not suited for cloud services operation and management. This paper introduces a Policy-based Event-driven Service-oriented Architecture (PESA) that enables the manageability of these loosely coupled services distributed across multiple public or private clouds or a hybrid cloud. PESA allows the implementation of policy driven management of service availability, performance, security and risk management. Using the concept of logical and virtual partitioning of the business service fabric into sub-fabrics – islands of services that may span company, geographical, and technological boundaries, public and private clouds, and corporate data centers, we describe a conceptual management architecture for policy enforcement. An example describes service availability and performance assurance in a business process implementation using a set of loosely coupled service components in a virtual cloud.

Scaling and Self-repair of Linux Based Services Using a Novel Distributed Computing Model Exploiting Parallelism

This paper describes a prototype implementing a high degree of fault tolerance, reliability and resilience in distributed software systems. The prototype incorporates fault, configuration, accounting, performance and security (FCAPS) management using a signaling network overlay and allows the dynamic control of a set of nodes called Distributed Intelligent Managed Elements (DIMEs) in a network. Each DIME is a computing entity (implemented in Linux and in the future will be ported to Windows) endowed with self-management and signaling capabilities to collaborate with other DIMEs in a network. The prototype incorporates a new computing model proposed by Mikkilineni in 2010, with signaling network overlay over the computing network and allows parallelism in resource monitoring, analysis and reconfiguration. A workflow is implemented as a set of tasks, arranged or organized in a directed acyclic graph (DAG) and executed by a managed network of DIMEs. Distributed DIME networks provide a network computing model to create distributed computing clouds and execute distributed managed workflows with high degree of agility, availability, reliability, performance and security.

Service Virtualization Using a Non-von Neumann Parallel, Distributed, and Scalable Computing Model

This paper describes a prototype implementing a high degree of transaction resilience in distributed software systems using a non-von Neumann computing model exploiting parallelism in computing nodes. The prototype incorporates fault, configuration, accounting, performance, and security (FCAPS) management using a signaling network overlay and allows the dynamic control of a set of distributed computing elements in a network. Each node is a computing entity endowed with self-management and signaling capabilities to collaborate with similar nodes in a network. The separation of parallel computing and management channels allows the end-to-end transaction management of computing tasks (provided by the autonomous distributed computing elements) to be implemented as network-level FCAPS management. While the new computing model is operating system agnostic, a Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Perl/Python (LAMP) based services architecture is implemented in a prototype to demonstrate end-to-end transaction management with auto-scaling, self-repair, dynamic performance management and distributed transaction security assurance. The implementation is made possible by a non-von Neumann middleware library providing Linux process management through multi-threaded parallel execution of self-management and signaling abstractions. We did not use Hypervisors, Virtual machines, or layers of complex virtualization management systems in implementing this prototype.

Parallax - A New Operating System for Scalable, Distributed, and Parallel Computing

Parallax, a new operating system, implements scalable, distributed, and parallel computing to take advantage of the new generation of 64-bit multi-core processors. Parallax uses the Distributed Intelligent Managed Element (DIME) network architecture, which incorporates a signaling network overlay and allows parallelism in resource configuration, monitoring, analysis and reconfiguration on-the-fly based on workload variations, business priorities and latency constraints of the distributed software components. A workflow is implemented as a set of tasks, arranged or organized in a directed acyclic graph (DAG) and executed by a managed network of DIMEs. These tasks, depending on user requirements are programmed and executed as loadable modules in each DIME. Parallax is implemented using the assembler language at the lowest level for efficiency and provides a C/C++ programming API for higher level programming.

Computing Models for Distributed Autonomic Clouds and Grids in the Context of the DIME Network Architecture

This paper presents an overview of computing models for a very important class of distributed systems: autonomic grids and clouds. We present the DIME network architecture as a representative of this still relatively new class of computing. We attempt to capture its potentials by formal modeling and emerging properties.

Parallax - A New Operating System Prototype Demonstrating Service Scaling and Service Self-Repair in Multi-core Servers

This paper describes a prototype demonstrating a new operating system (called Parallax) for the new generation many-core servers. The operating system is designed to address scaling, resource monitoring, dynamic configuration, and self-repair of many-core chip based servers to support distributed computational tasks. The operating system is implemented in assembler language for efficiency and supports C/C++ programming interfaces for high-level programming. The Parallax operating system is based on the DIME network computing model supporting distributed network-centric computing architecture. A parallel signaling network overlay over a network of von Neumann stored program control (SPC) computing nodes is utilized to implement dynamic fault, configuration, accounting, performance, and security management of both the nodes and the network based on business priorities, workload variations and latency constraints.

Manageability and Operability in the Business Services Fabric

The focus of manageability and operability concerns for long has been the Information Technology (IT) infrastructure and capabilities. Over the years many proposals have been made for improving IT Services Management. In the new cloud environment, the users’ ability to manage service performance is limited at best; the situation would get worse when enterprises require a seamless integration of public and private clouds with their and their partners’ IT infrastructures. This paper proposes to focus attention on the manageability and operability of business services because in the end their performance affects business outcomes.

AAA in a Cloud-Based Virtual DIME Network Architecture (DNA)

The design of a cloud architecture can be difficult according the business logic complexity which Cloud Service Providers (SPs) want to achieve. This paper describes a possible solution for simplifying the design of cloud-based services exploiting a DIME Network Architecture (DNA). More specifically, exploiting the signaling channel and FCAPS of DIMEs, we discuss an approach for the management of SSO Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting in cloud-based services.