In a large-scale collaboration, we are standing up and operating a state-of-the-art cloud based on VMware software and HP hardware (with Intel processors and Samsung DRAM and SSDs) implementing the vCloud APIs. The PDL vCloud will replace a multitude of single-purpose clusters, managed and underutilized by individual groups, with an IaaS private cloud for class projects, simulations, data analyses, and cluster and data-intensive computing activities. Moreover, it is an invaluable resource for studying the usage patterns and demands placed on clouds in academic settings, whose workloads we think will be representative of analytics-heavy non-academic activities. We are deeply instrumenting the infrastructure, at various levels and in cooperation with VMware and HP experts, working with different groups to understand their specific requirements, and exploring/developing automation approaches tuned to the challenging characteristics of not-for-profit academic environments.
FACULTY
STAFF
Bill Courtright
Zis Economou
Mitch Franzos
Manish Prasad
Michael Stroucken
Charlene Zang
GRAD STUDENTS
Anshul Gandhi
Ilari Shafer
Alexey Tumanov
Lianghong Xu
This effort has been enabled by the contributions of VMware, HP, Intel, and Samsung. VMware is providing software infrastructure, technical expertise, research funding, and collaborative effort. HP, Intel, and Samsung are providing substantial state-of-the-art hardware, with the latest in virtualization support, integration, and energy efficiency. This material is based on research sponsored in part by CyLab at Carnegie Mellon under grants DAAD19-02-1-0389 and W911NF-09-1-0273 from the Army Research Office. Ilari Shafer is supported in part by an NDSEG Fellowship, which is sponsored by the Department of Defense.
We thank the members and companies of the PDL Consortium: Amazon, Bloomberg, Datadog, Google, Honda, Intel Corporation, IBM, Jane Street, Meta, Microsoft Research, Oracle Corporation, Pure Storage, Salesforce, Samsung Semiconductor Inc., Two Sigma, and Western Digital for their interest, insights, feedback, and support.