CLEANSKY · Network for Cloud Computing Eco-System

Network for Cloud Computing Eco-System

As a paradigm for information technology (IT), cloud computing is “a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.” Cloud computing is evolving and supported not only in small data centers but also over largescale, energy-efficient new computing infrastructures. Example scenarios of large-scale cloud computing include scientific computing and telecommunication services, where big data and traffic are generated and need to be processed in a cost-efficient manner. CleanSky ITN (http://www.cleansky-itn.org/) aims to develop innovative ideas in the emerging areas within the “eco-system” of cloud computing: data center evolution, consolidation and service migration, and beyond, via structural training of young researchers. To achieve this goal, a unique combination of academic institutions and industrial organizations will collaborate together and create a multidisciplinary (computer science, telecommunications, scientific computing and optimization theory), international (four European countries plus USA and China) and intersectoral (public and private; education and industry) environment to embed a pool of young researchers for innovative research in cloud computing. The specific objectives of CleanSky are to develop innovative methodologies and approaches to satisfy application requirements and ensure efficiency within the emerging cloud computing paradigm and to optimize the energy and provisioning costs of individual data centers. In particular, Cleansky aims at improving the network infrastructure that supports the cloud eco-system, wherein Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV), two new paradigms have a big impact on efficiency and resource provisioning, especially in data centers and cloud environments. In the first half of the project, Cleansky fellows have been working and collaborating on a variety of challenges, including the characterization and measurement of cloud network usage, technical methods to improve efficiency and resource provisioning and the theoretical foundations for doing so. For each of these challenges concrete problems have been investigated, including the modeling of user requests and the allocation of these requests to caches (characterization), measuring failures in cloud services (characterization), scaling clouds to computation- or storage intensive applications (technical methods), service function chaining for mobile and software defined networks (technical methods), or developing theoretical models for virtual network function placement and energy efficiency of these functions (theoretical foundation). In the second half of the project, Cleansky fellows have been working and collaborating on new networking cloud relevant technologies such as edge and optical cloud networks, network function virtualization and microservices. Specifically, they have proposed solutions for data management in edge cloud; balancing Multiple Objectives for NFV Resource Allocation; resource Management Framework for NFV-based service function chaining, renewable energy based deployment of Virtual Network Functions, dynamic Backpressure and scheduling for NFV service chains; energy-aware provisioning in optical cloud networks, optimizing resource utilization of complex services; long-term energy efficient storage of gene sequencing, energy efficient network path usage of edge resources; a joint traffic anomaly detection and root cause analysis based approach for deploying network functions as microservices; and the development of a mathematical model that jointly considers dynamic network service composition strategies, scalable network function placement and carrier grade redundancy. As an initial training network, CleanSky also aims at providing excellent training to the twelve fellows that contributed to the research described above. In this regard, Cleansky has organized 3 summer schools and co-located training workshops for fellows and external participants. We also organized a total of three conferences. These conferences were also open to external members and also had talks from external speakers. CleanSky has also actively disseminated the results via publications, talks at conferences/workshops as well as poster sessions on the sidelines of the conferences and summer schools organized by Cleansky. Contact person Prof. Dr. Xiaoming Fu, PD Mayutan Arumaithurai University of Goettingen Goettingen, Germany fu — a — cs.uni-goettingen.de, arumaithurai — a — cs.uni-goettingen.de http://www.cleansky-itn.org/

Data: CORDIS, © European Union