High Availability Configuration Research Articles

JINR cloud infrastructure evolution

To fulfil JINR commitments in different national and international projects related to the use of modern information technologies such as cloud and grid computing as well as to provide a modern tool for JINR users for their scientific research a cloud infrastructure was deployed at Laboratory of Information Technologies of Joint Institute for Nuclear Research. OpenNebula software was chosen as a cloud platform. Initially it was set up in simple configuration with single front-end host and a few cloud nodes. Some custom development was done to tune JINR cloud installation to fit local needs: web form in the cloud web-interface for resources request, a menu item with cloud utilization statistics, user authentication via Kerberos, custom driver for OpenVZ containers. Because of high demand in that cloud service and its resources over-utilization it was re-designed to cover increasing users’ needs in capacity, availability and reliability. Recently a new cloud instance has been deployed in high-availability configuration with distributed network file system and additional computing power.

JINR Cloud Infrastructure

Cloud technologies are already wide spread among IT industry and start to gain popularity in academic field. To provide a modern computing facility for JINR users participating in different national and international scientific projects as well as to satisfy the needs of developers (development, testing and debugging various apps in various environments) and system administrators (testing and studying specifics of installation and operation of new apps or verifying updates) a cloud infrastructure was deployed at the Laboratory of Information Technologies of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (LIT JINR). Initially having simple setup with single front-end cloud node and few cluster nodes only it is now transformed into robust powerful cloud platform with front-end core services in high availability configuration distributed over two servers including MySQL data base replicas, and cloud data store based on distributed network file system. Users authentication in cloud web GUI via Kerberos, a custom driver for OpenVZ virtualization support as well as a driver for integration with other private clouds on infrastructure level and visualization of statistics on cloud resources usage have been developed in-house for our own needs. The JINR cloud is used not only by JINR users, developers and system administrators to fulfill JINR commitments in different national and international projects but also as a computing facility in BES-III experiment.

Leveraging virtualization to optimize high-availability system configurations

Leveraging redundant resources is a common means of addressing availability requirements, but it often implies redundant costs as well. At the same time, virtualization technologies promise cost reduction through resource consolidation. Virtualization and high-availability (HA) technologies can be combined to optimize availability while minimizing costs, but merging them properly introduces new challenges. This paper looks at how virtualization technologies and techniques can augment and amplify traditional HA approaches while avoiding potential pitfalls. Special attention is paid to applying HA configurations (such as active/active and active/passive) to virtualized environments, stretching virtual environments across physical machine boundaries, resource-sharing approaches, field experiences, and avoiding potential hazards.