XPS: SDA: Elasticizing the Linux Operating System for the Cloud

计算中的主要最近进步之一是大规模数据中心的发展，其中每个数据中心中可以容纳数十万台计算机。在云计算中，各个应用程序可以各自租用计算空间，以便在一个或多个数据中心上执行。的电脑。 云应用程序通常需要动态调整它们租用的资源量，弹性地增加或减少它们所需的处理、内存、存储和/或网络带宽的量。今天的基于云的系统要求将弹性明确编码到他们的软件中，这给应用程序开发人员带来了负担。 该项目旨在研究一种方法，该方法通过在操作系统（OS）级别自动纳入弹性来支持应用程序的动态扩展，从而简化了弹性化基于云的应用程序的任务。该项目计划开发一个名为ElasticOS的开源软件工具，将弹性融入Linux操作系统，希望这样一个实用的工具可以为社会带来更广泛的影响，即改变主要云提供商在其云基础设施中部署应用程序的方式，并通过减轻云中弹性编程的复杂性使应用程序开发人员受益。该项目的智力价值和研究进展预计关注用于支持基于云的现代操作系统中的存储器、联网、存储和处理的弹性的新颖技术和工具的开发。特别是，该项目将探索一个新概念的可行性和性能，通过使用弹性页表的想法在云机器上拉伸进程/线程来实现弹性内存。进一步的研究挑战预计将解决的建议包括以下内容：确定和建立一个弹性的操作系统架构的主要组成部分，设计一种方法来统一跨多个节点的网络地址空间，使网络I/O可以被视为弹性，发现一个实用的自适应在线算法的页面聚类和布局，利用应用程序的本地性和并行性。将网络弹性扩展到片上网络;发现在弹性中适应多线程的方法;以及开发用于发现可用弹性云资源的及时且准确的协议。该项目打算在ElasticOS之上测试四种不同类型的标准应用程序，以便更好地了解如何调整弹性：大型内存数据库应用程序;计算密集型应用程序;网络密集型Web服务器应用程序;以及无处不在的计算应用程序。这些PI完全有资格从事拟议的研究，并且在操作系统、网络、移动的云计算、计算机架构、无线传感器网络和分布式系统方面拥有众所周知的专业知识。 该项目对社会产生的其他重要的更广泛的影响预计将包括加强高级研究生系统课程的课程设置，并使本科生，代表性不足的少数民族和妇女通过REU和科罗拉多多样性倡议等方案参与该项目。

One of the major recent advances in computing is the development of large scale data centers, wherein hundreds of thousands of computers may be housed in each data center. In cloud computing, individual applications can each lease computing space to execute on one or more of a data center?s computers. Cloud applications often need to dynamically adjust the amount of resources that they lease, elastically scaling up or down the amount of processing, memory, storage and/or network bandwidth that they need. Today's cloud-based systems burden application developers by requiring elasticity to be explicitly encoded into their software. This project seeks instead to investigate an approach that eases the task of elasticizing cloud-based applications by automatically incorporating elasticity at the operating system (OS) level to support dynamic scaling of applications. This project plans to develop an open source software tool called ElasticOS that incorporates elasticity into the Linux OS, with the hope that such a practical tool could lead to significant broader impacts for society, namely transforming the way that major cloud providers deploy applications within their cloud infrastructure, and benefiting application developers by easing the complexity of elastic programming in the cloud.The intellectual merit and research advances expected from this project concern the development of novel techniques and tools for supporting elasticity of memory, networking, storage, and processing in cloud-based modern operating systems. In particular, the project will explore the feasibility and performance of a new concept to achieve elastic memory by stretching of processes/threads across cloud machines using the idea of elastic page tables. Further research challenges expected to be addressed by the proposal include the following: identifying and building the major components of an elastic OS architecture; devising a way to unify the network address space across multiple nodes so that network I/O can be treated as elastic; discovering a practical adaptive online algorithm for page clustering and placement that exploits application locality and parallelism; extending network elasticity to on-chip networking; discovering methods to accommodate multi-threading in elasticity; and developing a timely and accurate protocol for discovering available elastic cloud resources. The project intends to test four different types of standard applications on top of ElasticOS in order to better understand how to tune the elasticity: a large in-memory database application; a compute-intensive application; a network-intensive Web server application; and a ubiquitous computing application. The PIs are highly qualified to pursue the proposed research, and have well-known expertise in operating systems, networking, mobile cloud computing, computer architecture, wireless sensor networks, and distributed systems. Additional important broader impacts for society resulting from this project are expected to include enhancing the curriculum of advanced graduate systems courses and enabling undergraduate students, underrepresented minorities and women to participate in the project through programs such as REU and the Colorado Diversity Initiative.