Skip to main content
ARS Home » Plains Area » Fort Collins, Colorado » Center for Agricultural Resources Research » Water Management and Systems Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #306850
Title: The virtual machine (VM) scaler: an infrastructure manager supporting environmental modeling on IaaS clouds

Author
item LLOYD, WES - Colorad0 State University
item DAVID, OLAF - Colorad0 State University
item ARABI, MAZDAK - Colorad0 State University
item Ascough Ii, James
item Green, Timothy
item CARLSON, JACK - Colorad0 State University
item ROJAS, KEN - Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS, USDA)

Submitted to: Environmental Modeling International Conference Proceedings
Publication Type: Proceedings
Publication Acceptance Date: 6/18/2014
Publication Date: 6/21/2014
Citation: Lloyd, W., David, O., Arabi, M., Ascough II, J.C., Green, T.R., Carlson, J.R., Rojas, K.W. 2014. The virtual machine (VM) scaler: an infrastructure manager supporting environmental modeling on IaaS clouds. Environmental Modeling International Conference Proceedings. Available: http://www.iemss.org/sites/iemss2014/papers/iemss2014_submission_329.pdf.

Interpretive Summary: Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) clouds provide a new medium for deployment of environmental modeling applications. Harnessing advancements in virtualization, IaaS clouds can provide dynamic scalable infrastructure to better support scientific modeling computational demands. Providing scientific modeling "as-a-service" requires dynamic scaling of server infrastructure to adapt to changing user workloads. This paper presents the Virtual Machine (VM) Scaler, an autonomic resource manager for IaaS Clouds. VM-Scaler is a REST/JSON-based web services application which supports infrastructure provisioning and management to support scientific modeling for the Cloud Services Innovation Platform (CSIP) [Lloyd et al. 2012]. VM-Scaler harnesses the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) application programming interface to support model service scalability, cloud management, and infrastructure configuration for supporting modeling workloads. VM-Scaler provides "cloud control" while abstracting the underlying IaaS cloud from the end user. VM-Scaler provides a platform to improve scientific model deployment by supporting experimentation with VM management and placement approaches, and model job scheduling/proxy services.

Technical Abstract: Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) clouds provide a new medium for deployment of environmental modeling applications. Harnessing advancements in virtualization, IaaS clouds can provide dynamic scalable infrastructure to better support scientific modeling computational demands. Providing scientific modeling "as-a-service" requires dynamic scaling of server infrastructure to adapt to changing user workloads. This paper presents the Virtual Machine (VM) Scaler, an autonomic resource manager for IaaS Clouds. We have developed VM-Scaler, a REST/JSON-based web services application which supports infrastructure provisioning and management to support scientific modeling for the Cloud Services Innovation Platform (CSIP) [Lloyd et al. 2012]. VM-Scaler harnesses the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) application programming interface to support model service scalability, cloud management, and infrastructure configuration for supporting modeling workloads. VM-Scaler provides "cloud control" while abstracting the underlying IaaS cloud from the end user. VM-Scaler is extensible to support any EC2 compatible cloud and currently supports the Amazon public cloud and Eucalyptus private clouds versions 3.1 and 3.3. VM-Scaler provides a platform to improve scientific model deployment by supporting experimentation with: hot spot detection schemes, VM management and placement approaches, and model job scheduling/proxy services.