NCSU's virtual computing lab: a cloud computing solution

International Journal of High Performance Computing Applications, 1997

The Legion project at the University of Virginia is an architecture for designing and building system services that provide the illusion of a single virtual machine to users, a virtual machine that provides both improved response time via parallel execution and greater throughput. Legion targets workstation clusters and larger wide area assemblies of workstations, supercomputers, and parallel supercomputers. We have built a working Legion prototype, called the Campus-Wide Virtual Computer (CWVC). The CWVC extends an existing object-oriented parallel processing system by aggressively incorporating lessons learned in the last twenty years of heterogeneous distributed computing. In this paper, we describe the challenges that we overcame to realize a working CWVC, and we characterize the performance of a production biochemistry application.

1995

The Legion project at the University of Virginia is an architecture for designing and building system services that provide the illusion of a single virtual machine to users, a virtual machine that provides both improved response time via parallel execution and greater throughput. Legion targets workstation clusters and larger wide area assemblies of workstations, supercomputers, and parallel supercomputers. We have built a working Legion prototype, called the Campus-Wide Virtual Computer (CWVC). The CWVC extends an existing object-oriented parallel processing system by aggressively incorporating lessons learned in the last twenty years of heterogeneous distributed computing. In this paper, we describe the challenges that we overcame to realize a working CWVC, and we characterize the performance of a production biochemistry application.

International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET), 2011

This paper presents a computing hosting system to provide virtual computing laboratories for learning activities. This system is based on hosting and virtualization technologies. All the components used in its development are free software tools. The computing lab model provided by the system is a more sustainable and scalable alternative than the traditional academic computing lab, and it requires lower costs of installation and operation.

International Conference on Green and Human Information Technology 2024, 2024

In the era of the fourth industrial revolution, there has emerged a growing need for highly qualified specialists in the subfields of computer science. This poses great challenges to the education and training of young human resources. To partially meet this need, many educational institutions have invested a lot of money to set up computer science laboratories, allowing students to perform practical exercises relatively close to real life. In order to reduce costs in deployment, besides investing in servers, storage devices as well as personal computers, many researchers have also been applying virtualization platforms to make the most of the available resources. In this paper, we present a solution that combines hardware virtualization platform and network function virtualization to set up a computer science lab that meets various learning needs. We apply opensource kernel-based virtualization machine and Open vSwitch platform to optimize existing hardware equipment and reduce licensing costs. We also extend our proposed solution by implementing the idea on OpenStack to utilize the elasticity and the ability of the development of Cloud environments. Experiments show that the proposed solution has supported well in the design of practice exercises in many different subjects.

Cloud computing is used to provide users with computer resources on-demand any time over the Internet. e-Learning systems usually require lot of hardware and software resources. There are numerous educational institutions that cannot afford such investments, and cloud computing is the best solution for them. For educational purposes students, lecturers and researchers can leverage cloud computing to enhance their e-learning experience. The main objective of this paper is to present how the cloud computing provides on-demand virtual desktops for problem solving, on-demand virtual labs for special courses. The focus is how cloud services can be used, how they can be integrated into the existing infrastructure, and how new didactic models could look. The proposed solution helps in significant savings when compared to the cost of physical infrastructure procurement and maintenance for the user institution.

International Journal of Cloud Computing, 2014

Computing in Science and Engineering, 2008

S C I E n t I f I C P r o g r A m m I n g

Cluster computing has emerged as a result of the convergence of several trends, including the availability of inexpensive high performance microprocessors and high speed networks. This also enables the development of standard software tools for high performance distributed computing, and the increasing need of computing power for computational science and commercial applications [2], [8], [27]. Server Virtualizat ion has evolved to support applications ranging fro m supercomputing and mission-critical software, through web server and e-co mmerce, to h igh performance database applications [13]. The Educational Infrastructure Management is an expensive concern. Libraries, Co mputer centers and laboratories, classrooms, Internet services, campus wide network are the basic infrastructure of any educational organization. Frequent replacements, upgradation of the hardware, software in co mputer related infrastructure is often [5], [24], [25]. Many courses in the computing booklet can benefit from hands-on educational activities in the form of laboratory co mponents associated with the lectures. Th is courses technology enabled these to switch fro m a mostly descriptive content to learning activities which engage students in hands-on, authentic, problem-based learning [4], [20], [24]. Educators have an opportunity to teach many types of topics related to cluster computing in universities at various levels [2]. " Green co mputing " represents environmentally responsible way to reduce power and environ mental e-waste [21]. One of the primary goals of almost all forms of Virtualization is making the most efficient use of available system resources and optimizing it at high level [9]. This paper explores how some virtualization and clustering technologies can be deployed to provide students, as well as instructors, with an optimized environ ment.. We focus on providing solutions which can integrate transparently to any campus without involving significant changes to the classroom computers.

International Journal of Multimedia and Ubiquitous Engineering, 2014

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) based on virtual computing laboratories (VCL) model has been implemented in a small or medium scale on cloud computing in universities. Conventional physical computing laboratories with thousands of PCs are still widely used and co-exist with the VCL, however, the conventional PCs are not fully utilized in VCL. The demand of VDI is growing but the numbers of VDIs are bounded by the capacities of host servers. To have scale-up VDI, system feasibility in terms of functionality and performance and scalability of virtual machines should be tested. We propose an extended model of VCL that can scale-up VDIs by running on an integrated virtual and physical lab environment. End-users can build their own workspaces on a host server and migrate to PCs in physical lab. The paper concludes with discussions on the benefits, problems, and performances of the extended model of the VCL.