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

计算领域最近的主要进展之一是大规模数据中心的发展，其中每个数据中心可以容纳数十万台计算机。在云计算中，每个应用程序都可以租用计算空间，在一个或多个数据中心--S计算机--上执行。云应用程序通常需要动态调整它们租用的资源量，灵活地扩展或缩小它们所需的处理、内存、存储和/或网络带宽。如今，基于云的系统要求将弹性明确编码到他们的软件中，从而给应用程序开发人员带来了负担。相反，该项目寻求研究一种方法，通过自动整合操作系统(OS)级别的弹性来支持应用程序的动态扩展，从而简化基于云的应用程序的弹性处理任务。该项目计划开发一个名为ElasticOS的开源软件工具，将弹性融入到Linux OS中，希望这样一个实用的工具能够对社会产生重大的更广泛的影响，即改变主要云提供商在其云基础设施中部署应用的方式，并通过降低云中弹性编程的复杂性来使应用程序开发者受益。该项目的智力优势和预期的研究进展涉及开发新的技术和工具，以支持基于云的现代操作系统中内存、网络、存储和处理的弹性。特别是，该项目将探索一种新概念的可行性和性能，通过使用弹性页表的想法跨云计算机扩展进程/线程来实现弹性内存。该提案预计将解决的进一步研究挑战包括：识别和构建弹性OS体系结构的主要组件；设计一种方法来统一多个节点的网络地址空间，以便将网络I/O视为弹性；发现实用的自适应在线页面集群和放置算法，该算法利用应用程序的局部性和并行性；将网络弹性扩展到片上联网；发现在弹性上适应多线程的方法；以及开发及时和准确的协议来发现可用的弹性云资源。该项目打算在ElasticOS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。私人投资机构具有从事拟议研究的高度资格，并在操作系统、网络、移动云计算、计算机体系结构、无线传感器网络和分布式系统方面拥有知名专业知识。该项目预计将对社会产生其他重要的更广泛影响，包括增强高级研究生课程的课程，并使本科生、代表性不足的少数族裔和妇女能够通过REU和科罗拉多州多样性倡议等计划参与该项目。

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.