Yaron Wolfsthal

The reservoir model and architecture for open federated cloud computing

The emerging cloud-computing paradigm is rapidly gaining momentum as an alternative to traditional IT (information technology). However, contemporary cloud-computing offerings are primarily targeted for Web 2.0-style applications. Only recently have they begun to address the requirements of enterprise solutions, such as support for infrastructure service-level agreements. To address the challenges and deficiencies in the current state of the art, we propose a modular, extensible cloud architecture with intrinsic support for business service management and the federation of clouds. The goal is to facilitate an open, service-based online economy in which resources and services are transparently provisioned and managed across clouds on an ondemand basis at competitive costs with high-quality service. The Reservoir project is motivated by the vision of implementing an architecture that would enable providers of cloud infrastructure to dynamically partner with each other to create a seemingly infinite pool of IT resources while fully preserving their individual autonomy in making technological and business management decisions. To this end, Reservoir could leverage and extend the advantages of virtualization and embed autonomous management in the infrastructure. At the same time, the Reservoir approach aims to achieve a very ambitious goal: creating a foundation for next-generation enterprise-grade cloud computing.

FoCs: Automatic Generation of Simulation Checkers from Formal Specifications

For the foreseeable future, industrial hardware design will continue to use both simulation and model checking in the design verification process. To date, these techniques are applied in isolation using different tools and methodologies, and different formulations of the problem. This results in cumulative high cost and little (if any) cross-leverage of the individual advantages of simulation and formal verification.

AVPGEN-A test generator for architecture verification

This paper describes a system (AVPGEN) for generating tests (called architecture verification programs or AVPs) to check the conformance of processor designs to the specified architecture. To generate effective tests, AVPGEN uses novel concepts like symbolic execution and constraint solving, along with various biasing techniques. Unlike many earlier systems that make biased random choices, AVPGEN often chooses intermediate or final values and then solves for initial values that can lead to the desired values. A language called SIGL (symbolic instruction graph language) is provided in AVPGEN for the user to specify templates with symbolic constraints. The combination of user-specified constraints and the biasing functions is used to focus the tests on conditions that are interesting in that they are likely to activate various kinds of bugs. The system has been used successfully to debug many S/390 processors and is an integral part of the design process for these processors. >

Coverage-Directed Test Generation Using Symbolic Techniques

In this paper, we present a verification methodology that integrates formal verification techniques with verification by simulation, thereby providing means for generating simulation test suites that ensure coverage. We derive the test suites by means of BDD-based symbolic techniques for describing and traversing the implementation state space. In our approach, we provide a high-level of control over the generated test suites; a powerful abstraction mechanism directs the generation procedure to specific areas, that are the focus for verification, thereby withstanding the state explosion problem. The abstraction is achieved by partitioning the implementation state variables into categories of interest. We also depart from the traditional graph-algorithmic model for conformance testing; instead, using temporal logic assertions, we can generate a test suite where the set of state sequences (paths) satisfies some temporal properties as well as guaranteeing transition coverage. Our methodology has been successfully applied to the generation of test suites for IBM PowerPC and AS/400 systems.

RuleBase: Model Checking at IBM

RuleBase is a symbolic model checking tool, developed by the IBM Haifa Research Laboratory. It is the result of four years of experience in practical formal verification of hardware which, we believe, has been a key factor in bringing the tool to its current level of maturity. Our experience shows that after a short training period, designers can operate the tool independently and achieve impressive results. We present the tool and summarize our development and usage experience, focusing on some work done during 1996.

A Cloud Environment for Data-intensive Storage Services

The emergence of cloud environments has made feasible the delivery of Internet-scale services by addressing a number of challenges such as live migration, fault tolerance and quality of service. However, current approaches do not tackle key issues related to cloud storage, which are of increasing importance given the enormous amount of data being produced in todays rich digital environment (e.g. by smart phones, social networks, sensors, user generated content). In this paper we present the architecture of a scalable and flexible cloud environment addressing the challenge of providing data-intensive storage cloud services through raising the abstraction level of storage, enabling data mobility across providers, allowing computational and content-centric access to storage and deploying new data-oriented mechanisms for QoS and security guarantees. We also demonstrate the added value and effectiveness of the proposed architecture through two real-life application scenarios from the healthcare and media domains.

Model Checking at IBM

Over the past nine years, the Formal Methods Group at the IBM Haifa Research Laboratory has made steady progress in developing tools and techniques that make the power of model checking accessible to the community of hardware designers and verification engineers, to the point where it has become an integral part of the design cycle of many teams. We discuss our approach to the problem of integrating formal methods into an industrial design cycle, and point out those techniques which we have found to be especially effective in an industrial setting.

RESERVOIR: Management technologies and requirements for next generation Service Oriented Infrastructures

RESERVOIR project [16] is developing an advanced system and service management approach that will serve as the infrastructure for Cloud Computing and Communications and Future Internet of Services by creative coupling of service virtualization, grid computing, networking and service management techniques. This paper presents work in progress for the integration and management of such systems into a new generation of Managed Service Infrastructure.

IBM research division cloud computing initiative

Cloud computing represents the latest phase in the evolution of Internet-based computing. In this paper, we describe the fundamental building blocks of cloud computing and the initiative undertaken by the IBM Research Division in this area, which includes work on Internet-scale data centers, virtualization, scalable storage, and cloud computing services. The focus of this project has been the Research Compute Cloud, an environment for cloud computing research that is also used as a computing resource by various groups in the IBM Research Division.

CloudWave: Where adaptive cloud management meets DevOps

The transition to cloud computing offers a large number of benefits, such as lower capital costs and a highly agile environment. Yet, the development of software engineering practices has not kept pace with this change. Moreover, the design and runtime behavior of cloud based services and the underlying cloud infrastructure are largely decoupled from one another.This paper describes the innovative concepts being developed by CloudWave to utilize the principles of DevOps to create an execution analytics cloud infrastructure where, through the use of programmable monitoring and online data abstraction, much more relevant information for the optimization of the ecosystem is obtained. Required optimizations are subsequently negotiated between the applications and the cloud infrastructure to obtain coordinated adaption of the ecosystem. Additionally, the project is developing the technology for a Feedback Driven Development Standard Development Kit which will utilize the data gathered through execution analytics to supply developers with a powerful mechanism to shorten application development cycles.