II-EN: Infrastructure to Support Desktop Virtualization Experiments for Research and Education

II-EN：支持研究和教育桌面虚拟化实验的基础设施

• 批准号: 1347889
• 负责人: Prasad Calyam
• 金额: $ 36.87万
• 依托单位: University of Missouri-Columbia
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-01-01 至 2017-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1347889&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: II; EN; Infrastructure; Support; Desktop

This project is a Computing Research Infrastructure Enhancing Infrastructure (CRI II-EN) project focused on measurement and evaluation of thin clients and ?virtual desktop clouds? (VDCs) at Ohio State University . By transitioning their ?traditional desktops? that have dedicated hardware and software installations to VDCs that are accessible via thin-clients, user communities greatly benefit in terms of user convenience, and cost-savings. However, to allocate and manage VDC resources in a scalable and cost-effective manner, cloud service providers are faced with unique challenges. User workload profiles in VDCs are bursty (e.g., during daily desktop startup, when user switches between text and graphic intensive applications), and thin-client user Quality of Experience (QoE) is highly sensitive to network health variations in the Internet. Unfortunately, existing works focus mainly on managing server-side resources based on utility functions of CPU and memory loads, and do not consider network health and thin-client user experience. Resource allocations without combined utility-directed information of system loads, network health and thin-client user experience in VDC platforms inevitably results in costly over-provisioning of resources, even for as few as tens of users. Also, due to lack of tools to measure the user experience from the server-side of VDCs, management functions in VDCs such as configuring thin client protocol parameters are often performed using guesswork, which in turn impacts user QoE. To address the above research challenges in developing scalable VDCs with satisfactory thin-client user QoE, the PIs have developed a ?VMLab? pilot infrastructure that can support desktop virtualization experiments for research and education communities. Over the last two years, this infrastructure has supported: (a) research and development activities relating to VDC resource allocation and thin-client performance benchmarking, (b) desktop virtualization sandboxes for system administrators, (c) virtual desktops for classroom labs involving faculty and students, and (d) evaluation of the feasibility to deploy computationally intensive interactive applications (e.g., remote volume visualization) in virtual desktops. This project will expand the VMLab infrastructure and enable system measurement and user experience evaluation during productive use. Broader ImpactThe broader impacts of this project include serving high-school students and other users from under-represented groups. The proposed research will explore the potential for using the thin-client computing model to provide high-quality user experience to groups otherwise unable to purchase or maintain a full blown PC. The thin-client model may not only be cost effective in terms of purchase costs (assuming end-users do not have to amortize the cost of back-end infrastructure, which is the case in this scenario), but also has a low steady-state cost due to simplicity of device maintenance and troubleshooting. The area of desktop applications hosted in a cloud is an important and rapidly emerging area (both in academia and industry). The broad dissemination of results will have positive impact in an economically valuable technology.

该项目是一个计算研究基础设施增强基础设施 (CRI II-EN) 项目，专注于瘦客户端和“虚拟桌面云”的测量和评估。俄亥俄州立大学（VDC）。 通过转变他们的“传统桌面”？ VDC 拥有可通过瘦客户端访问的专用硬件和软件安装，用户社区在用户便利性和成本节约方面受益匪浅。然而，为了以可扩展且经济高效的方式分配和管理 VDC 资源，云服务提供商面临着独特的挑战。 VDC 中的用户工作负载配置文件是突发性的（例如，在日常桌面启动期间，当用户在文本和图形密集型应用程序之间切换时），并且瘦客户端用户体验质量 (QoE) 对 Internet 中的网络运行状况变化高度敏感。不幸的是，现有的工作主要集中在基于CPU和内存负载的效用函数来管理服务器端资源，而没有考虑网络健康和瘦客户端用户体验。在 VDC 平台中，如果没有结合公用事业导向的系统负载、网络运行状况和瘦客户端用户体验信息进行资源分配，则不可避免地会导致成本高昂的资源过度配置，即使对于少至数十个用户也是如此。此外，由于缺乏从VDC服务器端衡量用户体验的工具，VDC中的管理功能（例如配置瘦客户端协议参数）通常通过猜测来执行，这反过来又影响了用户的QoE。为了解决上述开发具有令人满意的瘦客户端用户 QoE 的可扩展 VDC 的研究挑战，PI 开发了“VMLab”。可以支持研究和教育界桌面虚拟化实验的试点基础设施。在过去两年中，该基础设施支持了：(a) 与 VDC 资源分配和瘦客户端性能基准测试相关的研发活动，(b) 系统管理员的桌面虚拟化沙箱，(c) 涉及教师的课堂实验室的虚拟桌面和学生，以及（d）评估在虚拟桌面中部署计算密集型交互式应用程序（例如远程体积可视化）的可行性。 该项目将扩展 VMLab 基础设施，并在生产使用过程中实现系统测量和用户体验评估。更广泛的影响 该项目的更广泛影响包括为高中生和来自代表性不足群体的其他用户提供服务。拟议的研究将探索使用瘦客户端计算模型为无法购买或维护完整 PC 的群体提供高质量用户体验的潜力。瘦客户端模型不仅在购买成本方面具有成本效益（假设最终用户不必分摊后端基础设施的成本，就像本场景中的情况），而且还具有较低的稳定成本。由于设备维护和故障排除的简单性，国家成本。 云中托管的桌面应用程序领域是一个重要且快速新兴的领域（无论是在学术界还是工业界）。 结果的广泛传播将对具有经济价值的技术产生积极影响。