II-EN: Infrastructure to Support Desktop Virtualization Experiments for Research and Education

II-EN：支持研究和教育桌面虚拟化实验的基础设施

• 批准号: 1347889
• 负责人: Prasad Calyam
• 金额: $ 36.87万
• 依托单位: University of Missouri-Columbia
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-01-01 至 2017-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1347889&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: II; EN; Infrastructure; Support; Desktop

This project is a Computing Research Infrastructure Enhancing Infrastructure (CRI II-EN) project focused on measurement and evaluation of thin clients and ?virtual desktop clouds? (VDCs) at Ohio State University . By transitioning their ?traditional desktops? that have dedicated hardware and software installations to VDCs that are accessible via thin-clients, user communities greatly benefit in terms of user convenience, and cost-savings. However, to allocate and manage VDC resources in a scalable and cost-effective manner, cloud service providers are faced with unique challenges. User workload profiles in VDCs are bursty (e.g., during daily desktop startup, when user switches between text and graphic intensive applications), and thin-client user Quality of Experience (QoE) is highly sensitive to network health variations in the Internet. Unfortunately, existing works focus mainly on managing server-side resources based on utility functions of CPU and memory loads, and do not consider network health and thin-client user experience. Resource allocations without combined utility-directed information of system loads, network health and thin-client user experience in VDC platforms inevitably results in costly over-provisioning of resources, even for as few as tens of users. Also, due to lack of tools to measure the user experience from the server-side of VDCs, management functions in VDCs such as configuring thin client protocol parameters are often performed using guesswork, which in turn impacts user QoE. To address the above research challenges in developing scalable VDCs with satisfactory thin-client user QoE, the PIs have developed a ?VMLab? pilot infrastructure that can support desktop virtualization experiments for research and education communities. Over the last two years, this infrastructure has supported: (a) research and development activities relating to VDC resource allocation and thin-client performance benchmarking, (b) desktop virtualization sandboxes for system administrators, (c) virtual desktops for classroom labs involving faculty and students, and (d) evaluation of the feasibility to deploy computationally intensive interactive applications (e.g., remote volume visualization) in virtual desktops. This project will expand the VMLab infrastructure and enable system measurement and user experience evaluation during productive use. Broader ImpactThe broader impacts of this project include serving high-school students and other users from under-represented groups. The proposed research will explore the potential for using the thin-client computing model to provide high-quality user experience to groups otherwise unable to purchase or maintain a full blown PC. The thin-client model may not only be cost effective in terms of purchase costs (assuming end-users do not have to amortize the cost of back-end infrastructure, which is the case in this scenario), but also has a low steady-state cost due to simplicity of device maintenance and troubleshooting. The area of desktop applications hosted in a cloud is an important and rapidly emerging area (both in academia and industry). The broad dissemination of results will have positive impact in an economically valuable technology.

该项目是一个计算研究基础架构增强基础架构（CRI II-EN）项目，重点是对瘦客户和“虚拟桌面云”的测量和评估？ （VDC）在俄亥俄州立大学。 通过过渡他们的传统桌面？将专用的硬件和软件安装到可以通过薄信息，用户社区访问的VDC上，在用户便利性方面受益匪浅，并节省成本。但是，要以可扩展且具有成本效益的方式分配和管理VDC资源，云服务提供商面临着独特的挑战。 VDC中的用户工作负载配置文件是爆发的（例如，在每日桌面启动期间，当用户在文本和图形密集型应用程序之间切换时），而稀薄的客户用户体验质量（QOE）对Internet网络健康变化非常敏感。不幸的是，现有作品主要集中在基于CPU和内存负载的实用程序功能的服务器端资源上，并且不考虑网络健康和稀薄的用户体验。资源分配没有组合实用程序负载，网络健康和VDC平台中稀疏的用户体验的组合信息不可避免地会导致资源的昂贵过度提供，即使大量用户也很少。同样，由于缺乏从VDC的服务器端测量用户体验的工具，因此通常使用猜测工作来执行VDC中的管理功能，例如配置薄客户端协议参数，这反过来又影响了用户QOE。为了解决以令人满意的薄客户用户qoe开发可扩展VDC的上述研究挑战，PIS开发了一个VMLAB？可以支持研究和教育社区的桌面虚拟化实验的试点基础设施。 Over the last two years, this infrastructure has supported: (a) research and development activities relating to VDC resource allocation and thin-client performance benchmarking, (b) desktop virtualization sandboxes for system administrators, (c) virtual desktops for classroom labs involving faculty and students, and (d) evaluation of the feasibility to deploy computationally intensive interactive applications (e.g., remote volume visualization) in virtual桌面。 该项目将扩大VMLAB基础架构，并在生产性使用过程中启用系统测量和用户体验评估。该项目的更广泛影响包括为高中生和其他代表性群体的其他用户提供服务。拟议的研究将探索使用薄客户计算模型为小组提供高质量的用户体验的潜力，否则无法购买或维护完整的PC。稀疏客户模型不仅在购买成本方面可能具有成本效益（假设最终用户不必摊销后端基础架构的成本，在这种情况下是这种情况），而且由于设备维护和故障排除的简单性，稳态成本也很低。 在云中托管的桌面应用程序的区域是一个重要且迅速的领域（在学术界和行业中）。 结果的广泛传播将对经济有价值的技术产生积极影响。