Technology

Published 20 February 2009

New trends in Distributed Computing at the Extremadura Research Centre for Advanced Technologies. The Virtualization approach

CETA-CIEMAT
Extremadura (Spain)

Scientists are demanding more and more computation resources every year. Their requests have been partially solved by using distributed computing techniques where several institutions collaborate increasing computing power.

Furthermore, the collaborative work among researchers has shown to be an increasing need. The distributed paradigm also tries to tackle this demand by allowing the interaction of heterogeneous hardware. However, this approach turns out to be a challenge when collaboration networks grow. In this regard, machine virtualization improves the distributed computing advantages. This technique optimizes the distributed system usability, where users can adapt their virtual machines to specific requirements. Additionally, virtualization methods in distributed environment require little experience from the user in order to be implemented.

On the other hand, in order to embrace as many hardware configurations and software dependences as possible, computing centres adopt a wide scope design. A drawback derived from this policy is that researchers often face a great effort to adapt their applications to the computing environment.

As a consequence, most companies are migrating their computers to virtual machines in order to optimize both energy and space demands, disaster recovery, security copies, etc.

In this regard, the Extremadura Centre for Advanced Technologies (CETA) is developing a solution based on Virtualization over a GRID infrastructure. With this approach, CETA intends to offer a high standing solution to the scientific community.

Authors:
Miguel Angel Diaz Corchero, technical support.
Maria Boton Fernandez, research fellow.
Francisco Prieto Castrillo, coordinator of the Science and Technology Unity.

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