This project seeks to leverage advances in virtual machine computing to enhance the foundations of automated resource management for virtual server infrastructure. It focuses on architecture, mechanisms, and policies for autonomic hosting centers that sense-and-respond to adapt automatically to changes in traffic demands or resource conditions, while holding human administrative burdens constant. It addresses key elements of a computing service utility: configuring and instantiating operating system images and services, binding them to server resources, and controlling their interactions at the system and application level.
The research includes development and evaluation of a Web-based laboratory and testbed software for research in autonomic data centers and adaptive services. The testbed responds to a need for new tools that is recognized in the autonomic computing research community, and it has potential to accelerate progress in autonomic computing research. The core capability of the testbed is a set of mechanisms to enable self-monitoring and adaptation by the hosted services and the autonomic data center itself. The testbed provides facilities for users to develop and install controllers for all aspects of resource management policy and adaptation, and experiment with selected workloads and faultloads interactively. It will provide researchers and students with prepackaged deployable applications and integrated load generation, with functions to modulate the request stream along various dimensions and experiment with controller policies and their interactions.
The project also involves research in self-managing services, controller policies, and analysis of instrumentation data. These elements of the project use the testbed as a tool for experimental evaluation.
