Speaker
Dr
Ulrich Schwickerath
(CERN)
Description
Between March and August 2009 a project has been set up at CERN with
the aim to evaluate possibilities to use virtualization at a large scale, with
the focus on batch computing. Two key issues have been identified for this specific
application: the placing of virtual machines on an appropriate hyper-visor, and the
selection of an appropriate image which should be driven by the actual demand.
Both commercial and free software solutions exist which are able to solve the placing
issue.
The virtual machine orchestrater, VMO, a commercial solution by Platform computing,
and the free software solution OpenNebula have been evaluated during the project.
For VMO, the vendor provided a first implementation of an algorithm for selecting
the image to be deployed, which is driven by user requirements of pending batch jobs.
For OpenNebula, an external mechanism needs to be developed to perform this task.
In the presentation, the basic concepts of the project and lessons learned will be
presented. Further visions and possible implications for services offered at
CERN will be described.
Author
Dr
Ulrich Schwickerath
(CERN)
Co-authors
Dr
Sebastien Goasguen
(Clemson University)
Dr
Tony Cass
(CERN)
