Section: Software and Platforms

PVC: Private Virtual Cluster

Participant : Franck Cappello [correspondant] .

Current complexity of Grid technologies, the lack of security of Peer-to-Peer systems and the rigidity of VPN technologies make sharing resources belonging to different institutions still technically difficult.

We propose a new approach called "Instant Grid" (IG), which combines various Grid, P2P and VPN approaches, allowing simple deployment of applications over different administration domains. Three main requirements should be fulfilled to make Instant Grids realistic: simple networking configuration (Firewall and NAT), no degradation of resource security, no need to re-implement existing distributed applications.

Private Virtual Cluster, is a low-level middle-ware that meets Instant Grid requirements. PVC turns dynamically a set of resources belonging to different administration domains into a virtual cluster where existing cluster runtime environments and applications can be run. The major objective of PVC is to establish direct connections between distributed peers. To connect firewall protected nodes in the current implementation, we have integrated three techniques: UPnP, TCP/UDP Hole Punching and a novel technique Traversing-TCP.

One of the major application of PVC is the third generation desktop Grid middleware. Unlike BOINC and XtremWeb (which belong to the second generation of desktop Grid middleware), PVC allows the users to build their Desktop Grid environment and run their favorite batch scheduler, distributed file system, resource monitoring and parallel programming library and runtime software. PVC ensures the connectivity layer and provide a virtual IP network where the user can install and run existing cluster software.

By offering only the connectivity layer, PVC allows to deploy P2P systems with specific applications, like file sharing, distributed computing, distributed storage and archive, video broadcasting, etc.