SpACCE: a sophisticated ad hoc cloud computing environment built by server migration to facilitate distributed collaboration

Abstract

A sophisticated ad hoc cloud computing environment (SpACCE) is proposed to facilitate distributed collaboration. A SpACCE is built according to the needs that occur at any given time on a set of personal, i.e., non-dedicated, computers (PCs) in offices and laboratories, and dynamically migrate a server for application sharing to another PC. Distributed collaboration mainly occurs ad hoc. Although such distributed collaboration requires a large volume of calculation capacity on the server in order to share an application among distributed PCs, conventional cloud computing environments composed of dedicated servers are not suited to flexibly deploying applications ad hoc. A SpACCE deals with this problem by executing server migration on an application-sharing system, CollaboTray, indispensable to share any application without modification. The level of calculation capacity required to execute server migration and the effectiveness of server migration was clarified by building a SpACCE in a university research room.