Virtuoso: a Computer Resource Marketplace (26060/26075/26076/26077

Virtuoso is a prototype system that creates a marketplace for resource providers to lease computer capacity to resource buyers in a straightforward manner through the use of virtualization technologies. Virtualization simultaneously minimizes the amount of management that providers need to do and maximizes the flexibility that buyers have. A key aspect of the system is its ability to dynamically adapt to changing workloads and resource availability without requiring any application or OS changes.

Virtuoso presents a similar interface to that of a traditional hardware vendor such as Dell, but machines that a user configures are instantiated as virtual machines that are run on the physical hardware of providers on a leased basis. Instead of buying physical machines, the user leases virtual machines, paying only as they are being used. Virtuoso’s technologies minimize the differences between virtual hardware and physical hardware, making the management of the leased virtual machines almost identical to the management of the physical machines they replace: A virtual machine monitor lets the user install and run any operating systems he chooses, an overlay networking system makes his virtual machines appear to be directly attached to his network, and CPU and network reservation mechanisms provide stable, predictable performance. Additionally, Virtuoso can observe the behavior of the user’s virtual machines and the underlying physical network and dynamically adapt to improve their performance, without any application or operating system changes.

The primary components of Virtuoso are:

A collection of daemons and the virtual machine monitor running on the provider The Virtuoso web interface for providers and users The VNET virtual network The VTTIF inference tool The VSCHED Real-time scheduler The VRESERVE network reservation tool for optical networks The VADAPT adaptation tools and algorithms Each element is described in detail in research papers and doctoral dissertations authored by the inventors. VNET is an overlay network that creates and maintains the networking illusion that the user’s virtual machines are on the user’s local area network. It also provides arbitrary topology and routing under global control, and supports the migration of live connections to virtual machines, even over the wide area. VTTIF integrates with VNET to automatically infer the dynamic topology and traffic load of applications running inside the virtual machines in the Virtuoso system. VSCHED schedules a collection of virtual machines on a host according to the model of independent periodic real-time tasks, providing a simple and easily understood SLA that is effective for both batch and interactive applications. VRESERVE provides optical network reservations. VADAPT uses the information from VTTIF to automatically drive mechanisms such as virtual machine migration, VNET topology/routing, VSCHED, and VRESERVE to increase the performance of the applications running inside the virtual machines. VADAPT includes fast heuristic algorithms designed and evaluated in the context of a wide range of parallel computing, enterprise computing, and web-based computing workloads, as well as human-directed algorithms designed in the context of interactive computing workloads (e.g., desktop replacement).

Experimental Results: In numerous papers and two doctoral dissertations, the investigators have demonstrated the feasibility of the prototype system and its components. They have demonstrated automatic adaptation in the system, using inferred information about the application running in a collection of virtual machines and inferred information about the underlying network to dynamically choose a mapping of virtual machines to physical hosts, and a topology and routes for the overlay that increases application performance. They have also demonstrated the automatic selection of optical network paths and CPU reservations based on inferred information. These evaluations are in the context of a wide range of parallel computing and enterprise computing workloads. The investigators have also extensively evaluated human-directed adaptation algorithms and components. The results show that Virtuoso’s adaptation technologies extend successfully to interactive computing contexts (such as desktop replacement). Unlike previous work in adaptive systems and load balancing, no modifications to the application software or its operating system are needed by the Virtuoso system.

An instruction manual has been written for the prototype Virtuoso system. Movie clips for Virtuoso are demonstrated at http://virtuoso.cs.northwestern.edu/. That site also provides all publications and public presentations related to Virtuoso.


STAGE OF DEVELOPMENT: Northwestern seeks a licensing partner to commercialize this invention.

Inventor(s): Dinda, Gupta, Heuer, Lange, Lin, Shoykhet, and Sundararaj

Type of Offer: Licensing



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