II-NEW: One Cloud Does Not Fit All: Minnesota Integrated Cloud Systems Research Testbed (MiST)

在过去的几年里，大型数据中心的海量计算资源和存储容量实现了巨大的增长，支持新的互联网应用程序和服务。与此同时，智能手机、平板电脑和电子阅读器的快速增长和广泛采用，用户可以通过它们在移动中访问这些应用和服务。这些互补趋势的汇合催生了移动服务和云计算的新兴概念。然而，当前的移动服务和云计算产品对充分发挥其潜力构成了许多困难的挑战。这些挑战包括用户对计算资源缺乏控制，由于用户设备和云资源的分离而导致性能低下和缺乏情景，以及集中式云提供的隐私有限。这些挑战提出了一些重要问题，例如：我们能否通过利用大量小型参与者贡献的计算和存储资源来构建大规模的、基于社区的、可定制的云计算基础设施？我们能否开发个性化和协作性的互联网云服务和移动应用程序，在利用现有云计算基础设施的同时实现用户控制？哪些应用程序可以在每种类型的云上有效运行，以及如何将这些云结合在一起以产生更强大的平台？我们如何才能充分实现移动和云计算的潜力，同时最大限度地减少其碳足迹？明尼苏达大学(UMN)的PI正在进行广泛的研究，以应对这些挑战，方法是构建一个多样化的、分散在广泛地区的集成云系统；它不仅利用商业大型云基础设施，还利用边缘的较小规模的本地社区资源。在这些研究工作中继续取得进展的一个重大障碍是缺乏灵活和可控的实验计算、存储和网络基础设施。该项目旨在通过建立明尼苏达州综合云系统试验床(MIST)研究基础设施来克服这一障碍，以推进云计算基础设施和应用的研究。该研究机构由三个相互连接的逻辑层组成：i)由两个数据中心组成的核心云系统；ii)由几台服务器机器组成的多个分布式边缘服务器云；以及iii)大量固定和移动用户，包括各种不同的用户设备。在教育方面，这一研究基础设施提供了理想的实践学习环境，向研究生和本科生传授对当今IT员工至关重要的重要数据分析、系统建设和实验技能。PIs将对MIST研究基础设施进行的研究纳入其课堂教学，既包括网络、安全、存储和分布式系统核心课程的课堂项目，也包括本科高级课程和指导性研究课程。私人投资机构在支持本科生方面有很好的记录，特别是女性和代表性不足的学生。私人投资机构计划通过与其行业合作伙伴的密切互动，以及通过出版物、演示文稿和向更大的研究界公开发布研究数据、软件工具和原型系统来传播研究进展。

The past few years have seen a tremendous growth of massive computing resources and storage capacities in large data centers enabling new Internet applications and services. At the same time, there has been a rapid growth and widespread adoption of smart phones, tablets, and e-readers, through which users access these applications and services on the move. The confluence of these complementary trends has given rise to the emerging notions of mobile services and cloud computing. However, current mobile services and cloud computing offerings pose many difficult challenges to realize their full potential. These challenges include lack of user control over computing resources, poor performance and lack of context due to the separation between user devices and cloud resources, and limited privacy provided by centralized clouds. These challenges raise important questions such as: Can we build large-scale, ?community-based?, customizable cloud computing infrastructures by leveraging computing and storage resources contributed by a large number of small players? Can we develop personalized and collaborative Internet cloud services and mobile apps that enable user control, while tapping into existing cloud computing infrastructures? What applications can be run effectively on each type of cloud, and how could such clouds be coupled to yield a much more powerful platform? How can we fully realize the potential of mobile and cloud computing while minimizing its carbon footprint?The PIs at the University of Minnesota (UMN) are conducting a wide range of research on addressing these challenges, by building an integrated cloud system that is diverse and dispersed across a wide area of locations; it not only utilizes the commercial large-scale cloud infrastructures, but also leverages smaller-scale, local community resources at the edge. A significant barrier to continued progress in these research efforts is lack of a flexible and controllable computing, storage and networking infrastructure for experimentation. This project seeks to overcome this obstacle by building the Minnesota Integrated cloud Systems Testbed (MiST) research infrastructure for advancing research on cloud computing infrastructures and applications. This research facility is organized in three interconnected logical tiers: i) core cloud systems consisting of two data centers; ii) several distributed edge server clouds consisting of a few server machines; and iii) swarms of stationary and mobile users, comprising a wide array of different user devices. In terms of education, this research infrastructure provides an ideal "hands-on" learning environment to teach both graduate and undergraduate students important data analysis, system building and experimental skills that are critical for today's IT workforce. The PIs incorporate research conducted on the MiST research infrastructure in their classroom teaching, both for class projects in the core courses on networking, security, storage, and distributed systems, as well as in undergraduate senior and directed research courses. The PIs have a strong track-record of supporting undergraduate students, especially women and under-represented students. The PIs plan to disseminate the research advances via close interaction with their industrial collaborators, and through publications, presentations and public release of research data, software tools and prototype systems to the larger research community.