SYSTEM MODELS FOR DISTRIBUTED AND CLOUD COMPUTING
Distributed and cloud computing systems are built over a large number of autonomous
computer nodes. These node machines are interconnected by SANs, LANs, or WANs
hierarchically. With today’s networking technology, a few LAN switches can easily
connect hundreds of machines as a working cluster. A WAN can connect many local
clusters to form a very large cluster of clusters. In this sense, one can build a massive
system with millions of computers connected to edge networks.
Massive systems are considered highly scalable and can reach web-scale connectivity,
either physically or logically. In Table 1.2, massive systems are classified into four
groups: clusters, P2P networks, computing grids, and Internet clouds over huge data
centers. In terms of node number, these four system classes may involve hundreds,
thousands, or even millions of computers as participating nodes. These machines work
collectively, cooperatively, or collaboratively at various levels. The table entries
characterize these four system classes in various technical and application aspects.
om the application perspective, clusters are most popular in supercomputing
applications. In 2009, 417 of the Top 500 supercomputers were built with cluster
architecture. It is fair to say that clusters have laid the necessary foundation for building
large-scale grids and clouds. P2P networks appeal most to business applications.
However, the content industry was reluctant to accept P2P technology for lack of
copyright protection in ad hoc networks. Many national grids built in the past decade
were underutilized for lack of reliable middleware or well-coded applications. Potential
advantages of cloud computing include its low cost and simplicity for both providers and
users.
1. Clusters of Cooperative Computers
A computing cluster consists of interconnected stand-alone computers that work
cooperatively as a single integrated computing resource. In the past, clustered computer
systems have demonstrated impressive results in handling heavy workloads with large
data sets.
1.1 Cluster Architecture
Figure 1.15 shows the architecture of a typical server cluster built around a low-latency,
high-bandwidth interconnection network. This network can be as simple as a SAN (e.g.,
Myrinet) or a LAN (e.g., Ethernet). To build a larger cluster with more nodes, the
interconnection network can be built with multiple levels of Gigabit Ethernet, Myrinet, or
InfiniBand switches. Through hierarchical construction using a SAN, LAN, or WAN, one
can build scalable clusters with an increasing number of nodes. The cluster is connected
to the Internet via a virtual private network (VPN) gateway. The gateway IP address locates
the cluster. The system image of a computer is decided by the way the OS manages the
shared cluster resources. Most clusters have loosely coupled node computers. All
resources of a server node are managed by their own OS. Thus, most clusters have
multiple system images as a result of having many autonomous nodes under different OS
control.
1.2 Single-System Image
Greg Pfister has indicated that an ideal cluster should merge multiple system images
into a single system image (SSI). Cluster designers desire a cluster operating system or
some middleware to support SSI at various levels, including the sharing of CPUs,
memory, and I/O across all cluster nodes. An SSI is an illusion created by software or
hardware that presents a collection of resources as one integrated, powerful resource.
SSI makes the cluster appear like a single machine to the user. A cluster with multiple
system images is nothing but a collection of independent computers.
1.3 Hardware, Software, and Middleware Support
The building blocks are computer nodes (PCs, workstations, servers, or SMP), special
communication software such as PVM or MPI, and a network interface card in each
computer node. Most clusters run under the Linux OS. The computer nodes are
interconnected by a high-bandwidth network (such as Gigabit Ethernet, Myrinet,
InfiniBand, etc.).
Special cluster middleware supports are needed to create SSI or high availability (HA).
Both sequential and parallel applications can run on the cluster, and special parallel
environments are needed to facilitate the use of the cluster resources. For example,
distributed memory has multiple images. Users may want all distributed memory to be
shared by all servers by forming distributed shared memory (DSM). Many SSI features are
expensive or difficult to achieve at various cluster operational levels. Instead of achieving
SSI, many clusters are loosely coupled machines. Using virtualization, one can build
many virtual clusters dynamically, upon user demand.
1.4 Major Cluster Design Issues
Unfortunately, a cluster-wide OS for complete resource sharing is not available yet.
Middleware or OS extensions were developed at the user space to achieve SSI at selected
functional levels. Without this middleware, cluster nodes cannot work together
effectively to achieve cooperative computing. The software environments and
applications must rely on the middleware to achieve high performance. The cluster
benefits come from scalable performance, efficient message passing, high system
availability, seamless fault tolerance, and cluster-wide job management, as summarized
in Table 1.3.
2. Grid Computing Infrastructures
In the past 30 years, users have experienced a natural growth path from Internet to web
and grid computing services. Internet services such as the Telnet command enables a
local computer to connect to a remote computer. A web service such as HTTP enables
remote access of remote web pages. Grid computing is envisioned to allow close
interaction among applications running on distant computers simultaneously. Forbes
Magazine has projected the global growth of the IT-based economy from $1 trillion in
2001 to $20 trillion by 2015. The evolution from Internet to web and grid services is
certainly playing a major role in this growth.
2.1 Computational Grids
Like an electric utility power grid, a computing grid offers an infrastructure that couples
computers, software/middleware, special instruments, and people and sensors
together. The grid is often con-structed across LAN, WAN, or Internet backbone networks
at a regional, national, or global scale. Enterprises or organizations present grids as
integrated computing resources. They can also be viewed as virtual platforms to
support virtual organizations. The computers used in a grid are pri-marily workstations,
servers, clusters, and supercomputers. Personal computers, laptops, and PDAs can be
used as access devices to a grid system.
Figure 1.16 shows an example computational grid built over multiple resource sites
owned by different organizations. The resource sites offer complementary computing
resources, including workstations, large servers, a mesh of processors, and Linux
clusters to satisfy a chain of computational needs. The grid is built across various IP
broadband networks including LANs and WANs already used by enterprises or
organizations over the Internet. The grid is presented to users as an integrated resource
pool as shown in the upper half of the figure.
2.2 Grid Families
Grid technology demands new distributed computing models, software/middleware
support, network protocols, and hardware infrastructures. National grid projects are
followed by industrial grid platform development by IBM, Microsoft, Sun, HP, Dell, Cisco,
EMC, Platform Computing, and others. New grid service providers (GSPs) and new grid
applications have emerged rapidly, similar to the growth of Internet and web services in
the past two decades. In Table 1.4, grid systems are classified in essentially two
categories: computational or data grids and P2P grids. Computing or data grids are built
primarily at the national level.
3. Peer-to-Peer Network Families
An example of a well-established distributed system is the client-server architecture. In
this scenario, client machines (PCs and workstations) are connected to a central server
for computing, e-mail, file access, and database applications. The P2P
architecture offers a distributed model of networked systems. First, a P2P network is
client-oriented instead of server-oriented. In this section, P2P systems are introduced at
the physical level and overlay networks at the logical level.
3.1 P2P Systems
In a P2P system, every node acts as both a client and a server, providing part of the system
resources. Peer machines are simply client computers connected to the Internet. All
client machines act autonomously to join or leave the system freely. This implies that no
master-slave relationship exists among the peers. No central coordination or central
database is needed. In other words, no peer machine has a global view of the entire P2P
system. The system is self-organizing with distributed control.
Figure 1.17 shows the architecture of a P2P network at two abstraction levels. Initially,
the peers are unrelated. Each peer machine joins or leaves the P2P network voluntarily.
Only the participating peers form the physical network at any time. Unlike the cluster or
grid, a P2P network does not use a dedicated interconnection network. The physical
network is simply an ad hoc network formed at various Internet domains randomly using
the TCP/IP and NAI protocols. Thus, the physical network varies in size and topology
dynamically due to the free membership in the P2P network.
3.2 Overlay Networks
Data items or files are distributed among the participating peers. Based on
communication or file-sharing needs, the peer IDs form an overlay network at the logical
level. This overlay is a virtual network
formed by mapping each physical machine with its ID, logically, through a virtual mapping
as shown in Figure 1.17. When a new peer joins the system, its peer ID is added as a node
in the overlay network. When an existing peer leaves the system, its peer ID is removed
from the overlay network automatically. Therefore, it is the P2P overlay network that
characterizes the logical connectivity among the peers.
There are two types of overlay networks: unstructured and structured. An unstructured
overlay network is characterized by a random graph. There is no fixed route to send
messages or files among the nodes. Often, flooding is applied to send a query to all nodes
in an unstructured overlay, thus resulting in heavy network traffic and nondeterministic
search results. Structured overlay networks follow certain connectivity topologies and
rules for inserting and removing nodes (peer IDs) from the overlay graph. Routing
mechanisms are developed to take advantage of the structured overlays.
3.3 P2P Application Families
Based on application, P2P networks are classified into four groups, as shown in Table 1.5.
The first family is for distributed file sharing of digital content (music, videos, etc.) on the
P2P network. This includes many popular P2P networks such as Gnutella, Napster, and
BitTorrent, among others. Collaboration P2P networks include MSN or Skype chatting,
instant messaging, and collaborative design, among others. The third family is for
distributed P2P computing in specific applications. For example, SETI@home provides
25 Tflops of distributed computing power, collectively, over 3 million Internet host
machines. Other P2P platforms, such as JXTA, .NET, and FightingAID@home, support
naming, discovery, communication, security, and resource aggregation in some P2P
applications. We will discuss these topics in more detail in Chapters 8 and 9.
3.4 P2P Computing Challenges
P2P computing faces three types of heterogeneity problems in hardware, software, and
network requirements. There are too many hardware models and architectures to select
from; incompatibility exists between software and the OS; and different network
connections and protocols
make it too complex to apply in real applications. We need system scalability as the
workload increases. System scaling is directly related to performance and bandwidth.
P2P networks do have these properties. Data location is also important to affect
collective performance. Data locality, network proximity, and interoperability are three
design objectives in distributed P2P applications.
P2P performance is affected by routing efficiency and self-organization by participating
peers. Fault tolerance, failure management, and load balancing are other important
issues in using overlay networks. Lack of trust among peers poses another problem.
Peers are strangers to one another. Security, privacy, and copyright violations are major
worries for those in the industry in terms of applying P2P technology in business
applications. In a P2P network, all clients provide resources including computing power,
storage space, and I/O bandwidth. The distributed nature of P2P networks also increases
robustness, because limited peer failures do not form a single point of failure.
By replicating data in multiple peers, one can easily lose data in failed nodes. On the other
hand, disadvantages of P2P networks do exist. Because the system is not centralized,
managing it is difficult. In addition, the system lacks security. Anyone can log on to the
system and cause damage or abuse. Further, all client computers connected to a P2P
network cannot be considered reliable or virus-free. In summary, P2P networks are
reliable for a small number of peer nodes. They are only useful for applications that
require a low level of security and have no concern for data sensitivity.
4. Cloud Computing over the Internet
Gordon Bell, Jim Gray, and Alex Szalay [5] have advocated: “Computational science is
changing to be data intensive. Supercomputers must be balanced systems, not just CPU
farms but also petascale I/O and networking arrays.” In the future, working with large data
sets will typically mean sending the computations (programs) to the data, rather than
copying the data to the workstations. This reflects the trend in IT of moving computing
and data from desktops to large data centers, where there is on-demand provision of
software, hardware, and data as a service. This data explosion has promoted the idea of
cloud computing.
Cloud computing has been defined differently by many users and designers. For
example, IBM, a major player in cloud computing, has defined it as follows: “A cloud is a
pool of virtualized computer resources. A cloud can host a variety of different workloads,
including batch-style backend jobs and interactive and user-facing applications.” Based
on this definition, a cloud allows workloads to be deployed and scaled out quickly
through the rapid provisioning of virtual or physical machines. The cloud supports
redundant, self-recovering, highly scalable programming models that allow workloads to
recover from many unavoidable hardware/software failures. Finally, the cloud system
should be able to monitor resource use in real-time to enable rebalancing of allocations
when needed.
4.1 Internet Clouds
Cloud computing applies a virtualized platform with elastic resources on demand by
provisioning hardware, software, and data sets dynamically (see Figure 1.18). The idea is
to move desktop computing to a service-oriented platform using server clusters and huge
databases at data centers. Cloud computing leverages its low cost and simplicity to
benefit both users and providers. Machine virtualization has enabled such cost-
effectiveness. Cloud computing intends to satisfy many users.
applications simultaneously. The cloud ecosystem must be designed to be secure,
trustworthy, and dependable. Some computer users think of the cloud as a centralized
resource pool. Others consider the cloud to be a server cluster which practices
distributed computing over all the servers used.
4.2 The Cloud Landscape
Traditionally, a distributed computing system tends to be owned and operated by an
autonomous administrative domain (e.g., a research laboratory or company) for on-
premises computing needs. However, these traditional systems have encountered
several performance bottlenecks: constant system maintenance, poor utilization, and
increasing costs associated with hardware/software upgrades. Cloud computing as an
on-demand computing paradigm resolves or relieves us from these problems. Figure
1.19 depicts the cloud landscape and major cloud players, based on three cloud service
models.
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) This model puts together infrastructures demanded
by users—namely servers, storage, networks, and the data center fabric. The user can
deploy and run on multiple VMs running guest OSes on specific applications. The user
does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure but can specify when to
request and release the needed resources.
• Platform as a Service (PaaS) This model enables the user to deploy user-built
applications onto a virtualized cloud platform. PaaS includes middleware, databases,
development tools, and some runtime support such as Web 2.0 and Java. The platform
includes both hardware and software integrated with specific programming interfaces.
The provider supplies the API and software tools (e.g., Java, Python, Web 2.0, .NET). The
user is freed from managing the cloud infrastructure.
• Software as a Service (SaaS) This refers to browser-initiated application software over
thousands of paid cloud customers. The SaaS model applies to business processes,
industry applications, consumer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resources
planning (ERP), human resources (HR), and collaborative applications. On the customer
side, there is no upfront investment in servers or software licensing. On the provider side,
costs are rather low, compared with conventional hosting of user applications.
Internet clouds offer four deployment modes: private, public, managed, and hybrid.
These modes demand different levels of security implications. The different SLAs imply
that the security responsibility is shared among all the cloud providers, the cloud
resource consumers, and the third-party cloud-enabled software providers. The
advantages of cloud computing have been advocated by many IT experts, industry
leaders, and computer science researchers.
