EAGER: Resource Containers: Addressing Resource Heterogeneity for Cloud4Home Applications

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The focus of this project is on cloud computing.The Cloud4Home project strives to enhance services and service delivery by moving from the current "in the cloud" vs. "at the edge" model of cloud computing to a hybrid model in which services can easily leverage both types of resources. Concurrent with the rapid gains in popularity of cloud computing facilities and infrastructure is an even more impressive continued increase in the capabilities of the end devices used in the Internet's periphery. In fact, major hardware manufacturers are releasing new end devices as frequently as every six months, whereas server systems typically experience a multi-year replacement cycle. This raise the interesting challenge of how to best combine cloud-provided services, like those offered commercially, with services that can efficiently run on consumer devices like smartphones, iPads or netbooks, laptops and desktops nodes, and game consoles. In particular, purely end-point based solutions cannot take advantage of the large storage and computational capacities present in large scale datacenters. Conversely, current "thin client" models in which end devices "simply access the Internet" can suffer from high and variable delays in accessing and using remote resources. Preferable to either extreme would be a solution that (1) can leverage the lower costs of using local resources and exploiting locally available state and avoid potential issues with data privacy or security for cloud-based operation, while at the same time (2) utilize Internet resources when those are not encumbered by undue costs like high latency or undue communication overheads.The specific technical requirements for such enhanced services include: -jointly using remote cloud platforms with local, nearby resources available in the home, office or other "private" environment; -decoupling the physical location of state and service execution from the applications that interface with such services/state, and -exposing higher-level "properties" of the diverse capabilities of the aggregate resources and then use this heterogeneity to better meeting application requirements and satisfy service policies.To achieve these goals, this project introduces the system-level abstraction of resource containers, which represent pools of resources in the Cloud4Home environment tagged with specific properties or features. Resource containers will be realized for and evaluated with representative @home and server systems and with services that combine computational with storage needs. If successful, the Cloud4Home prototype can be a valuable vehicle to explore the myriad of other challenges in these environments - from dynamic resource discovery to security and privacy.