1. C Loomis (CNRS/LAL) and V. Floros (GRNET)
Operational Considerations From Running Grid Services on Cloud Resources
C Loomis (CNRS/LAL) and V. Floros (GRNET)
EGI-TF (Amsterdam)
14 September 2010

2. Contents StratusLab Project Administrator Survey Results
Project Facts
Vision and Benefits
Administrator Survey Results
Operational Considerations
Dynamic Deployment
Performance Considerations
Accounting
Trust
Conclusions

3. Contents Facts Goal Contacts Started: 1 June 2010 Duration: 24 months
Partners: 6 from 5 countries
Goal
Provide coherent, open-source private cloud distribution
Contacts
Website:
Twitter: StratusLab
CNRS (FR)
UCM (ES)
GRNET (GR)
SIXSQ (CH)
TID (ES)
TCD (IE)

4. Grid Services Over Cloud Resources
users
Grid Resource Center
Grid Services
Cloud API
StratusLab
Distribution
Private Cloud

5. Benefits Ease of Deployment Increased Reliability/Robustness
Prepared virtual machine images for grid services
Decouple OS on physical systems from grid requirements
Increased Reliability/Robustness
Migration for load balancing or for avoid hardware failures
Better isolate user jobs/machines from others
Customized Environments
Responsibility of environments rests with VOs
Flexible environments appeals to more diverse scientific community

6. Administrator Survey Results
Surveys for Users and Administrators
Collect use cases and requirements from target communities
Analysis: D2.1 (
Important Feedback
33% of users are regular cloud users
68% of administrators will deploy virtualization/cloud technologies
Half have already deployed; remainder within 1 year
Reluctance for administrators to trust user-generated VMs

7. Early Results Complete Grid Sites at GRNET Worker Node Tests at LAL
Two StratusLab clouds deployed: Ubuntu and CentOS 5.5
Functional (pre-production) grid site on each cloud
Worker Node Tests at LAL
Worker nodes deployed via Quattor in StratusLab cloud
Run in production for >1 month without problems
Appliance Repository at TCD
Based on standard Apache web server
Contains stock images for supported operating systems
Will contain grid service images (“appliances”)

8. Dynamic Deployment Easier Grid Deployment
Grid service appliances  easier, wider deployment
VO service and tool appliances  lower barrier to creating VOs
Elastic site resources  site capacity changes significantly and rapidly
Streamlined Procedures and Policies
Larger load from more, smaller, and more diverse sites
Site validation procedures  more sites with faster startup
VO procedures adapted for more dynamic, temporary VOs
Grid administrator may not have physical control of machines
Dynamic Grid Services
Info. system, scheduling policies  adapt to dynamic environment
Cloud will help with broader, more systematic middleware testing

9. Performance Considerations
Maximize Efficiency
Pack more jobs/machines onto a physical machine
Energy savings through shutdown of unused machines
Minimize performance losses (esp. IO, communication)
Better Knowledge of “Task” Requirements
Can easily enforce memory, disk, CPU, bandwidth limits
Efficient packing requires this information at the site
Users/system must systematically transmit this information
Data access information critical for using hybrid cloud infrastructure

10. Accounting Short Term Integration: Easy
Running grid services over cloud
Simple accounting integration, just use existing mechanisms
May want to add information about execution environment
Longer Term Integration: More Challenging
Users deploying their own machines and services
CPU accounting fairly simple, must avoid double counting
New types of resources: bandwidth, storage, VM types
Incremental reporting for long-running services

11. Trust Reluctance to Run User-Defined Images Requirements
Realizing full potential of cloud infrastructures will require building (more) trust between users, VOs, and system administrators
Trust will vary with actors involved  sliding scale that balances level of trust with allowed capabilities
Requirements
Define security requirements for images (HEPiX)
Matchmaking: appliance metadata vs. site requirements
Enhanced monitoring (e.g. ports and connections)
Additional trust between firewall “controllers” and site administrators

12. Conclusions Combining Grid and Cloud Technologies
Easier deployment, maintenance of sites for administrators
More flexible, capable, and dynamic infrastructure for users
Operational Considerations
Dynamic infrastructure  streamlined procedures/policies
Better performance  better knowledge of resource requirements
Accounting expanded to include new types of resources
User-defined images  more trust, more metadata, policies, …