Section: Application Domains

Cluster, Grid and Cloud Computing

Cluster, Grid and more recently Cloud computing platforms aim at delivering a larger capacity of computing power compared to a single computer configuration. This capacity can be used to improve performance (for scientific applications) or availability (e.g., for Internet services hosted by a data center). These distributed infrastructures consist of a group of coupled computers that work together. This group can be spread across a LAN (cluster), across a WAN (Grid), and across the Internet (Clouds). Due to their large scale, these architectures require permanent adaptation, from the application to the system level and calls for automation of the adaptation process. We focus on self-configuration and self-optimization functionalities across the whole software stack: from the lower levels (systems mechanisms such as distributed file systems for instance) to the higher ones (i.e. the applications themselves such as J2EE clustered servers or scientific grid applications).

In 2012, we have developed the DVMS system, which contains one of the most highly scalable scheduling algorithm for virtual machines; we have also generated several results on the energy efficient management of Cloud applications and infrastructures, see Sec.  6.3 .