Section: Application Domains

Cluster, Grid and Cloud Computing

Cluster, Grid and more recently Cloud computing platforms aim at delivering a larger capacity of computing power compared to a single computer configuration. This capacity can be used to improve performance (for scientific applications) or availability (e.g., for Internet services hosted by a data center). These distributed infrastructures consists of a group of coupled computers that work together. This group can be spread across a LAN (cluster), across a WAN (Grid), and across the Internet (Clouds). Due to their large scale, these architectures require permanent adaptation, from the application to the system level and calls for automation of the adaptation process. We focus on self-configuration and self-optimization functionalities across the whole software stack : from the lower levels (systems mechanisms such as distributed file systems for instance) to the higher ones (i.e. the applications themselves such as J2EE clustered servers or scientific grid applications).

This year, we have investigated in particular, how we can manage more and more virtual machines (VMs) in IaaS (Infrastucture as a Service) infrastructures, taking into account the needs of the applications, VM constraints and energy consideration, see Sec.  6.3 .

We continued to deal with self-administration of large distributed architectures with the partners of the ANR SelfXL project, see Sec.  8.1 . Furthermore, we finalized the MCITN Scalus European network in which we are involved. The project SCALUS (SCALing by means of Ubiquitous Storage) addresses the foundation for ubiquitous storage systems, which can be scaled with respect to multiple characteristics (capacity, performance, distance, security, ...), see Sec.  8.2 . We are involved in a new ANR project, entitled SONGS (Simulation Of Next Generation Systems). This project aims at modeling different distributed systems to deliver an accurate framework for simulations. We are going to address all virtualization related concerns.