CSR: Small: System Support for Transiency in Data Center and Cloud Computing

University Of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst MA

Investigators

Abstract

Today's distributed applications are built using the implicit assumption that the underlying data center servers will be stable and normally available, barring for occasional faults. In many emerging scenarios, however, data centers and clouds only provide transient, rather than continuous, availability of their servers. Transiency in modern distributed systems arises in many contexts such as green data centers powered using renewable intermittent sources, cloud platforms that provide lower-cost spot server instances which can be preempted from their users, or smart data centers that voluntarily curtail their energy usage when signaled by the smart electric grid. This project proposes new research in distributed systems design that treats transiency as a first-class design principle. Since traditional fault-tolerance methods are too expensive or not well suited to handling the intermittent availability of servers caused by transiency, this project proposes new low-cost transiency mechanisms for modern data center and cloud platforms. For transiency in green data centers, the project focuses on a new virtualization mechanism based on bounded migration, and applies it to design system-wide transiency management algorithms. For cloud platforms, the project focuses on transiency algorithms that intelligently manage different mixes of stable on-demand and transient spot servers. Finally, to handle transiency due to smart grid interactions, the project proposes new mechanisms to judiciously modulate energy use without impacting application performance. The project employs a systems-driven approach based on prototype implementation and experimental evaluation using realistic application to demonstrate the benefits of these transiency mechanisms. The design of distributed systems that incorporate transiency have the potential to significantly increase the use of renewable energy sources within data centers and better integrate modern data centers and cloud platforms with the smart grid. Broader impacts of the project will include graduate courses that incorporate research results, undergraduate summer research projects, outreach to local K-12 schools in green computing, and the release of source code for the transiency algorithms to the research community.