Advanced Computing and Information Systems laboratory Virtual Appliances and Education using Clouds Dr. Renato Figueiredo ACIS Lab - University of Florida.

Advanced Computing and Information Systems laboratory

Virtual Appliances and Education using Clouds

Dr. Renato FigueiredoACIS Lab - University of Florida


Background

Traditional ways of delivering hands-on training and education in parallel/distributed computing have non-trivial dependences on the environment

• Difficult to replicate same environment on different resources (e.g. HPC clusters, desktops)

• Difficult to cope with changes in the environment (e.g. software upgrades)

Virtualization technologies• Remove key software dependences

• Allow packaging and replication of hands-on, executable educational environments

• Can be deployed, managed with cloud technologies

2


Overview

Virtual appliances Virtual networking

• Grid appliances and FutureGrid

Support for classes in FutureGrid Demo

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Guiding principles

Fidelity: activities should use full-fledged, executable software: education/training modules• Learn using the proper tools

Reproducibility: Creators of content should be able to install, configure, and test their modules once, and be assured of the same functional behavior regardless of where the module is deployed• Incentive to invest effort in developing, testing and

documenting new modules

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Guiding principles

Deployability: Students and users should be able to deploy modules in a simple manner, and in a variety of resources• Reduce barriers to entry; avoid dependences

upon a particular infrastructure

• Interactive use

Community-oriented: Modules should be simple to share, discover, reuse, and expand• Create conditions for “viral” growth

5


Role of clouds and portal

Executable modules – virtual appliances• Deployable on FutureGrid resources

• Deployable on other cloud platforms, as well as virtualized desktops

Community sharing – Web 2.0 portal, appliance image repositories• An aggregation hub for executable modules

and documentation

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Advanced Computing and Information Systems laboratory 7

What is an appliance?

Hardware/software appliances• TV receiver + computer + hard disk + Linux +

user interface

• Computer + network interfaces + FreeBSD + user interface


Virtual appliance example

Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP

copy

instantiate

LAMPimage

A web server Another Web server

Repeat…

VirtualizationLayer


Educational appliances

A flexible, extensible platform for hands-on, lab-oriented education on FutureGrid

Support clustering of resources• Virtual machines + virtual networking to create

sandboxed modules• Virtual “Grid” appliances: self-contained, pre-packaged

execution environments

• Group VPNs: simple management of virtual clusters by students and educators

9


Virtual Networking

A single appliance encapsulates software and configuration

Cluster/Grid/Cloud computing• Middleware expects a collection of machines,

typically on a LAN (Local Area Network)

• Appliances need to communicate and coordinate with each other

• Each worker needs an IP address, uses TCP/IP sockets

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Virtual cluster appliances

Virtual appliance + virtual network

copy

instantiate

Hadoop+

VirtualNetwork A Hadoop worker Another Hadoop worker

Repeat…

Virtual machine

Virtual network


Grid appliance in a nutshell

Plug-and-play clusters with a pre-configured software environment• Linux + (Hadoop, Condor, MPI, …)

• Scripts for zero-configuration

Hands-on examples, bootstrap infrastructure, and zero-configuration software – you’re off to a quick start


Virtual Network - GroupVPN

Setting up and managing typical VPNs can be daunting• VPN server(s), key distribution, NAT traversal

GroupVPN makes it simple for users to create and manage virtual cluster VPNs

Key insights:• Web 2.0 interface: create/manage user groups

• All the complexity of setting up and managing VPN links is automated


Deploying virtual clusters

Same image, different VPNs

copy

instantiate

Hadoop+

VirtualNetwork A Hadoop worker Another Hadoop worker

Repeat…

Virtual machine

GroupVPN

GroupVPNCredentials

(fromWeb site)

Virtual IP - DHCP10.10.1.1

Virtual IP - DHCP10.10.1.2


Support for classes on FutureGrid

Classes are setup and managed using the FutureGrid portal

Project proposal: can be a class, workshop, short course, tutorial• Needs to be approved by FutureGrid project

to become active Users can be added to a project

• Users create accounts using the portal

• Project leaders can authorize them to gain access to resources

• Students can then interactively use FG resources (e.g. to start VMs)

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Use of FutureGrid in classes

Cloud computing/distributed systems classes• U.of Florida, U. Central Florida, U. of Puerto

Rico, Univ. of Piemonte Orientale (Italy), Univ. of Mostar (Croatia)

Distributed scientific computing• Louisiana State University

Tutorials, workshops:• Big Data for Science summer school

• A cloudy view on computing

• SC’11 tutorial – Clouds for science

• Science Cloud Summer School (this month)

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Cloud computing classes

Massimo Canonico, U. Piemonte Orientale Difficulties to overcome:

• Hardware issues: find enough free physical machines able to host virtual machines

• Software issues: time to install/configure as many as possible different cloud platforms

• University was not able to provide me the necessary hardware and software support

Students started to play with FutureGrid• After attending few lessons, they were able to

start/stop virtual instance with several Cloud Computing platforms

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Students used Eucalyptus, OpenStack and Nimbus• Half were not computer scientists.

As FutureGrid freely shares their physical machines and their cloud platforms, decided to freely share all materials of my class. • Hands-out, configuration files and link to

useful documentation are available

• https://portal.futuregrid.org/contrib/cloud-computing-class

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Graduate-level “Cloud computing for Data-Intensive Sciences” (Judy Qiu, Fall 2010)• Virtualization technologies and tools

• Infrastructure as a service

• Parallel programming (MPI, Hadoop)

• FutureGrid provided a set of software options that made it possible for students to work on different projects along the system stack.

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Cloud Storage#8 Cloud Storage Survey (Xiaoming, Nixiaogang)

Cloud Storage#8 Cloud Storage Survey (Xiaoming, Nixiaogang)

Iterative MapReduce#3 LDA (Changsi, Yang)

#4 MemCache (Saliya, Yiming ,Jerome)#5 Avro (Yuduo, Yuan, patanachai)#6 PageRank (Shuo-Huan,Parag)

Iterative MapReduce#3 LDA (Changsi, Yang)

#4 MemCache (Saliya, Yiming ,Jerome)#5 Avro (Yuduo, Yuan, patanachai)#6 PageRank (Shuo-Huan,Parag)

Virtualization#9 Hypervisor Performance Analysis Project (James ,

Andrew)

Virtualization#9 Hypervisor Performance Analysis Project (James ,

Andrew)

Cloud Platfor

m

CloudInfrastruc

ture

Cloud Infrastructure #7 Nimbus, Eucalyptus (Stephen, Sonali, Shakeela)

Cloud Infrastructure #7 Nimbus, Eucalyptus (Stephen, Sonali, Shakeela)

Hypervisor/

Virtualization

Dryad/DryadLINQ#1 Matrix Multiplication (Swapnil,Amit,Pradnay)

#2 PhyloD (Ratul,Adrija,Chengming)

Dryad/DryadLINQ#1 Matrix Multiplication (Swapnil,Amit,Pradnay)

#2 PhyloD (Ratul,Adrija,Chengming)

Higher Level

Languages

Term Projects

(Slide courtesy of Judy Qiu)


University ofArkansas

Indiana University

University ofCalifornia atLos Angeles

Penn State

IowaState

Univ.Illinois at Chicago

University ofMinnesota Michigan

State

NotreDame

University of Texas at El Paso

IBM AlmadenResearch Center

WashingtonUniversity

San DiegoSupercomputer

Center

Universityof Florida

Johns Hopkins

July 26-30, 2010 NCSA Summer School Workshophttp://salsahpc.indiana.edu/tutorial

300+ Students (200 on sites from 10 institutes; 100 online)IU MapReduce and UF Virtual Appliance technologies are supported by FutureGrid.

(Slide courtesy of Judy Qiu)

Big Data for Science


Demonstration

Deploying virtual appliance node on FutureGrid (Nimbus @ Alamo)

Connecting to virtual machine Virtual networking Running sample job


Demonstration

Pre-instantiated VM to save us time:• cloud-client.sh --conf alamo.conf --run --name

grid-appliance-2.05.03.gz --hours 24

Connect to VM• ssh root@VMip

Check virtual network interface• ifconfig

Ping other VMs in the virtual cluster Submit Condor job


Uploading and sharing images

APIs available to upload images, customize, save, and share images

Community education pages are available• FutureGrid Web portal allows users to publish

their own content

• Tutorials, presentations on Web portal; VMs on image repositories


Where to go from here?

Tutorials on FutureGrid and Grid appliance Web sites for various middleware stacks• Condor, MPI, Hadoop

A community resource for educational virtual appliances• Success hinges on users effectively getting

involved

• If you are happy with the system, let others know!

• Contribute with your own content – virtual appliance images, tutorials, etc


Questions?

More information:• BOF: tomorrow 4:45pm, Burnham (8th floor)

• http://www.futuregrid.org

• http://grid-appliance.org

This document was developed with support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grant No. 0910812 to Indiana University for "FutureGrid: An Experimental, High-Performance Grid Test-bed." Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF

Advanced Computing and Information Systems laboratory Virtual Appliances and Education using Clouds Dr. Renato Figueiredo ACIS Lab - University of Florida.

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