CSR: Small: The Pocket Datacenter

基于云的分布式系统的研究和开发目前受到阻碍，因为大规模运行此类系统的难度令人难以置信。威斯康星州的袖珍数据中心(POD)项目直接解决了这一困境，使研究人员和开发人员能够在有限的硬件资源上运行大规模的分布式系统。Pod背后的关键新思想是数据规避，它从被测试的分布式系统的底层磁盘、内存和网络传输中移除实际应用程序数据。因此，POD使此类系统的许多虚拟实例能够在几台物理机上运行，从而使测试、调试和一般开发更简单、更快，并且资源密集度更低。基于云的分布式系统代表着现代计算基础设施中至关重要的一部分。随着用户和公司将他们的数据和计算迁移到这样的设施中，确保这样的系统正确和有效地运行变得越来越重要。POD使开发人员能够在不使用过多硬件资源的情况下调试现有系统和测试新设计；在他们的工作台中有了这样的工具，系统开发人员将能够更容易地构建和测试下一代基于云的系统，以支持越来越多的社会需求。

Research and development in cloud-based distributed systems is currentlyhindered due to the incredible difficulty of running such systems atscale. The Wisconsin Pocket Datacenter (PoD) project directly addresses thisdilemma by enabling researchers and developers to run large-scale distributedsystems on modest hardware resources. The key novel idea behind PoD is dataelision, which removes actual application data from the underlying disks,memories, and network transfers of the distributed system under test. PoD thusenables many virtual instances of such a system to be run upon just a fewphysical machines, thus making testing, debugging, and in general developmentsimpler, faster, and less resource-intensive.Cloud-based distributed systems represent a critically-important piece ofmodern computing infrastructure. As users and corporations migrate their dataand computation into such facilities, it is increasingly important to ensurethat such systems operate correctly and efficiently. PoD enables developers todebug existing systems and test new designs without excessive hardwareresources; with such a tool in their workbench, system developers will be ableto more readily build and test the next generation of cloud-based systems tosupport the needs of a growing percentage of society.