Vol 1, Issue 1, 2012

International Journal of Advances in Computing and Information Researches

Design of Private Cloud for Educational Sector using Eucalyptus

Mrs. Bharati Ainapure
Assistant Professor MIT College of Engg. Paud Road, Pune 0919881640118

Mrs. Sukhada Bhingarkar

Assistant Professor MIT College of Engg. Paud Road, Pune 0919860219248

Prof. Deven N. Shah

Professor Terna College of Engg. & Technology Nerul, Mumbai 0919869385560

ainapuressa@gmail.com

sukhada.bhingarkar@gmail.co m

devenshah@terna.org

ABSTRACT
Cloud computing technology is driving a fundamental change in todays computing industry, enabling IT managers to treat infrastructure as a common substrate, on which they can provision services to users faster in a much more flexible and cost-effective way without having to re-design or add to the underlying infrastructure[1]. Even, private cloud is also developing its root in educational sector. Many institutions today are facing certain issues because of extensive use of IT infrastructure. The laboratories at college are extensively used by students, teaching and non-teaching staff. As there is no centralized storage, these stakeholders use pendrives which creates virus problem. Some of the resources remain confined to one department e.g. certain software to which other departments can not gain an access. In case of machine failure, a new machine needs to be setup that leads to increase in costs. Also, internet connectivity can be misused. This paper presents a case study of deployment of private cloud in technical institute which overcomes all these issues mentioned above. It uses Eucalyptus Systems private cloud solution and builds private cloud based on open-source technologies and compatible with Amazons cloud services.

Quick time to market IT department transformation (focus on innovation vs. Maintenance and implementation) Greening of the data center Increased availability of high-performance applications to small/medium-sized businesses [2] In this paper, we discuss the Cloud Computing paradigm and its characteristics and present a case study of deployment of private cloud at college campus. This paper also discusses the benefits of Cloud Computing for technical institute.

1.1 What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing refers to the use of networked infrastructure software and capacity to provide resources to users in an ondemand environment. With cloud computing, information is permanently stored in centralized servers and cached temporarily on clients, which include desktop computers, notebooks, handhelds, and other devices[2,3]. According to the definition of National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Cloud Computing is a model for enabling convenient; on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. Cloud Computing is composed three service models that are Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS),and Infrastructure as a Service(IaaS), and it can be set up four deployment models that are Public, Private, Community, and Hybrid Cloud[2]. SaaS is a software delivery service that provides access to applications and data through internet connection anytime and anywhere. The software is accessible from various devices that can connect to internet through user interface such as a browser or API. PaaS provides a platform on cloud for application developers. This model of Cloud Computing delivers the development tools as a service over internet. Developers can build their applications on the development platform that run on providers infrastructure and applications are delivered to users via the internet from the providers servers. IaaS is the capability provided to the consumer is to provision processing, storage, networks, and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications]. These service models can be summarized as shown in figure 1[2,3].

General Terms
Cloud, PaaS, SaaS, Iaas, Resources, cloud computing.

Keywords
Private cloud, Virtual machine, instances, cloud controller, node controller, cluster controller.

1. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, Cloud Computing is most discussed term in business and academic environment. Because of the increasing popularity, many giant IT companies such as Microsoft, IBM, Google and Amazon interest Cloud Computing. Cloud Computing can be defined as providing resources and capabilities of Information Technology (e.g., applications, storages, communication, collaboration, infrastructure) via services offered by cloud computing providers. A Cloud Computing service has ubiquitous access through a Web browser or mobile device with APIs or special desktop applications developed by cloud service provider. Some benefits of Cloud Computing can be listed: Reduced implementation and maintenance costs Increased mobility for a global workforce Flexible and scalable infrastructures

Vol 1, Issue 1, 2012

International Journal of Advances in Computing and Information Researches

This paper presents the case study of internal private cloud that is developed for technical institute using Eucalyptus Systems private cloud solution to overcome the issues mentioned above.

2. RELATED WORK
Many managers in small business and academicians are not aware of benefits and characteristic of minimizing the cost of cloud computing. IT companies are eager to encourage educational adoption of cloud computing; for example, Google has designed cloud based Google-Apps for educational usage [6], and another example, IBM launched IBM Cloud Academy that is provide a global forum for educators, researchers and IT professionals from education industry to pursue cloud computing initiatives, develop skills and share best practices for reducing operating costs while improving quality and access to education [7]. A private cloud is a perfect model for companies in the IT sector as it helps in addressing the challenges of providing infrastructure quickly. For example, Infosys private cloud christened MyCloud, has the ability to host around 3,000 virtual machines (VMs) with an easy-to-use Self-Service portal and templatebased provisioning. Similarly, Wipro has documented savings of slashing the time taken for provisioning infrastructure using a selfservice portal environment. Private clouds also provide software services companies a perfect platform to rapidly launch new services. For example, Hexaware recently announced the launch of its cloud service, wherein it proposed to offer clients services in the space of IaaS, PaaS and SaaS.[5] ZeroDesktop, Inc., developer of next-generation Web Desktop solutions for public and private cloud computing has invented ZeroPC Private Cloud that provides the industry's first "disposable" virtual desktop for the education market. ZeroPC enables IT administrators to set up general kiosk-mode desktops with predefined look-and-feel, applications, files and programs that students access in classrooms, labs or libraries without requiring user login credentials, and that can be shared by many users[8]. The same benefits that the industry has realized with private clouds can be amplified when large associations leverage the cloud. For example, universities and state-education departments can share their infrastructure and create a private cloud. Progressive Infotech, a leading independent provider of IT Infrastructure Solutions and Services, has implemented private cloud at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi [5]. Texas college system in Houston, has done construction of a private cloud infrastructure to expedite delivery of IT services to its 62,000 students and 4,800 employees [9]. Carnegie Mellon University uses HP's Converged Infrastructure approach to build their private cloud network by installing HP Blades, Scale Out Storage and Virtual Connect. The University of Texas is creating a massive private cloud using 8,000 processors and six shared large memory machines and hundreds of terabytes of data storage for its cancer research arm [9]. The Vienna University of Technology (TU Vienna) is working with Dubai-based automation solutions company Pacific Control Systems to develop a dedicated cloud computing laboratory that will focus on solutions for the construction industry [10]. The University of Western Australia has embarked on an 18-month project to consolidate approximately 1000 disparate servers to a private cloud platform in Amcom data centers [11]. The pharmaceutical companies are expected to primarily resort to the comforts of the environment of a private cloud. A case in

Figure 1. Cloud Computing Service Models [2] Public cloud model represent an environment that is openly access. The cloud infrastructure is made available to the general public or a large industry group and is owned by an organization selling cloud services. Private cloud refers cloud computing on private networks. Private clouds are built for the exclusive use of one client, providing full control over data, security, and quality of service]. The community cloud infrastructure is shared by several organizations and supports a specific community that has shared concerns. The hybrid cloud is a composition of two or more clouds (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability [4].

1.2 Existing Problems in Technical Institutes

Clouds are well suited for educational institutes, as most institutions are today struggling to securely and cost effectively provide IT infrastructure. In an educational institution, the laboratories are set up as per subject requirements and as there is no separate lab for individual subjects, every machine is installed with multiple heavy applications. This is a headache for a lab assistant, as he or she has to reconfigure every machine for addition of new software or to upgrade existing software. Also, every day that goes by, research and educational needs of colleges change with developing technology. All the software and hardware of the college must be renewed in accordance with the changes. Also every year, the new versions of applications are required for courses with respect to the needs of industry. As a natural result of this progress, new software cause new hardware costs. The large majority of college budget is devoted to meet these needs. Educational institutions also grapple with the problem of extensive usage of pendrive in college labs since there is no centralized storage. This causes virus problems. Also, the final year students are provided dedicated desktops for their final year project. They submit a CD containing source code and documentation of project during submission. Since there is no central repository, it becomes difficult to maintain the projects as students pass out [5]. Internet connectivity can also be used inefficiently or misused to access unauthorized websites via proxy server software. In case of system failure, the laboratory assistant has to set up the machine afresh. Purchasing new machines or hardware refreshes lead to an increase in costs due to fresh hardware and licensing costs. Deploying Private Cloud within college campus can be said as a new approach to solution for all the problems mentioned above.

Vol 1, Issue 1, 2012

International Journal of Advances in Computing and Information Researches

point is Max Healthcare, which has partnered with Dell Services, to convert its IT infrastructure of all eight Max Healthcare facilities into a private cloud running remotely from Dell Services Data Center. Max Healthcare has deployed its Hospital Information System on the cloud, and is planning to rollout its Electronic Health Care System (EHR) on the private cloud [5]. A shared central infrastructure enabled by a private cloud is beneficial for retailers, as it gives them not only faster access to customer data, but is also helpful in rolling out new product initiatives. The private cloud is also being tested for running some of the e-governance projects. A government organization like the Open Technology Group at NIC, Chennai is testing out a private cloud using Ubuntu Enterprise cloud with the help of CSS Corp [5]. In similar way, open-source based private cloud can be adopted in technical institutes. It does not have to invest in additional infrastructure. Post deployment, the institute can create machine instances on-the-fly and create an infrastructure according to requirements. This helps in significant annual cost savings. This paper is structured as follows. Section 3 presents implementation of private cloud in college campus. The benefits of implementing private cloud in technical institute are discussed in Section 4. Finally the paper ends with conclusion and future work in section 5. 3. IMPLEMENTATION To implement the private cloud at educational institute level is very difficult as existing infrastructure as be reused. At education institute level where traditional On campus computing labs are important, where you are finding the Traditional Labs with Rows & rows of machines , Single image fits all -- 60+ apps , Lack of multiple SW versions , Lead time to include new applications, Flexibility has been converted in to meet the instructor demand, Make use of the user-owned hardware and Provision idle lab machines for remote use Previously could not create unique environments in traditional labs or they could not be supported centrally, ie. Linux Apache,PHP server for a CSC web development course - with root access. Through VCL the user can create these environments which are saved as images and can be recalled at a later date[12].

hosted internally or externally. One of the key distinctions between a traditional datacenter and server environment and a private cloud is the abstraction of physical resources such as servers, networks and disks. These are placed into higher-level, logical groupings such as resource pools, fault domains, upgrade domains and so on. These logical groupings are mapped to physical infrastructure and help you make intelligent provisioning and management decisions

3.2 Kernel Based virtual machine

There are several approaches to virtualization, today. One of them is a so called paravirtualization, where the guest OS must be slightly modified in order to run virtualized. The other method is called "full virtualization", where the guest OS can run as it is, unmodified. It has been said that full virtualization trades performance for compatibility, because it's harder to accomplish good performance without guest OS assisting in the process of virtualization. On the other hand, recent processor developments tend to narrow that gap. Both Intel (VT) and AMD (AMD-V) latest processors have hardware support for virtualization, tending to make paravirtualization not necessary. This is exactly what KVM[13] is all about, by adding virtualization capabilities to a standard Linux kernel, we can enjoy all the fine-tuning work that has gone (and is going) into the kernel, and bring that benefit into a virtualized environment. Using KVM, one can run multiple virtual machines running unmodified Linux or Windows images. Each virtual machine has private virtualized hardware: a network card, disk, graphics adapter, etc Under KVM's model, every virtual machine is a regular Linux process scheduled by the standard Linux scheduler. A normal Linux process has two modes of execution: kernel and user. KVM adds a third mode: guest mode (which has its own kernel and user modes).

3.1 Private Cloud

Figure 3. Stucture of KVM [17] KVM consists of two components: a device driver for managing the virtualization hardware; this driver exposes its capabilities a user-space component for emulating PC hardware; this is a lightly modified QEMU process QEMU is a well known processor emulator written by French computer wizard Fabrice Bellard.

3.3 Design Overview

Figure 2. Private Cloud [16] Private cloud is infrastructure operated solely for a single organization, whether managed internally or by a third-party and Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud is an open-source software stack that includes Eucalyptus, allowing for implementation of a private cloud infrastructure. Eucalyptus provides and supports an open

Vol 1, Issue 1, 2012

International Journal of Advances in Computing and Information Researches

source cloud platform. The conceptual representation is shown in figure 4.

Node controller and VM instances used IP addresses obtained from their respective cluster controller. The cloud may include 2- 6 core processors with single machine, which will be having capacity to run 48 instances at time. In this case single core can have 4 instances. In this way we can run 96 instances on a single cluster. Such design can support the implementation of multi-tenancy though the use of KVM as mentioned in section 3.2. With this we can able to start and stop instances using commandline tools and connect to the virtual machines. All virtual images were stored in the storage service. The storage services can be implemented as iSCSI volumes.

3.5 Cloud Security design

Figure 4. Conceptual Representation of the Eucalyptus Cloud

3.3.1 Cloud controller

It is the entry point to the private cloud for administrators, students, teachers and researchers. IT is responsible for querying the node manager for information about resources, making high level scheduling decisions and implementing then by making requests to cluster controllers. The CLC is shown in figure 4. It is also responsible for exposing and managing the underlying virtualized resources.

Provide cloud computing hosting platform, must provide confidentiality, integrity, and availability of customer data. It must also provide transparent accountability to allow customers and their agents to track administration of services.

3.5.1 Confidentiality
Confidentiality ensures that a customers data is only accessible by authorized entities. Private cloud can provide confidentiality via the following mechanisms: Identity and Access Management - Ensures that only properly authenticated entities are allowed access. Isolation - Minimizes interaction with data by keeping appropriate containers logically or physically separate.

3.3.2. Cluster Controller

It might be a cluster front end machine or any machine that has network connectivity to both the nodes running NCs and to the machine running CLC. CC gathers the information about a set of VMs and schedules VM execution on specific NCs and it also manages virtual instances.

3.5.2 Integrity
Students, research scholars, teachers obviously expect it to be protected from unauthorized changes. Cloud operating system provides this in a number of ways. The primary mechanism of integrity protection for customer data by keeping one of several versions of the Guest OS, kept up-to-date with relevant patches, selectable by the customer. By keeping image based on the package provided by the customer. Or by keeping configuration information, paging files, and other storage.

3.3.2 Node controller

IT is executed on every node that is designed for hosting VM instances. NCs control the execution, inspection and termination of VM instances on the host where it runs. It is also responsible for control requests from the cluster controller and to manage the virtual network endpoint.

3.3.3 Storage Controller

This allows users to store the persistent data, organized as eventually-consistent buckets and objects. It allows users to create, delete, list buckets, put, get, delete objects.

3.5.3 Availability 3.4 System Design

The private cloud design is basically divided into following functional blocks: Cloud controller, storage element and compute element( cluster computer and node controller). The network is divided into following: One network for the students, this is by means which the students access the cloud. One network internal to the cloud, this is network in which cloud controller to cluster controller functions occur. Network for each clusters one network to access the server. For the network configuration switches are used with subnets, then IP addresses allocated for the networks. The design reserves the static IP addresses for specific nodes, i.e. for the cloud controller, cluster controller and servers in the lab infrastructure. When a virtual machine is started the system scheduler automatically selects the host on which to run the virtual machine based on resource utilization and system policies. In the event of a hardware failure any virtual machine configured to be Highly Available will be restarted on another host in the cluster. The system scheduler manages the selection of the host system based on resource utilization within the cluster.

4. PRIVATE CLOUD BENEFITS

The private cloud infrastructure is built by clustering some of the existing desktops; hence no additional hardware had to be purchased. Post deployment, the Institute can reuse a lot of its existing infrastructure and does not require investing in additional capacity. This results in significant increase in annual savings. Each student has his own storage space in the cloud. Students can use the cloud storage space to store their daily experiments. The

Vol 1, Issue 1, 2012

International Journal of Advances in Computing and Information Researches

private cloud allows students to launch multiple virtual machine instances (based on various practical experiments) from any computer system. A student can attach her storage space to that particular instance to save any work done. The final year projects are stored on cloud that makes the projects available to the college for reference even though the students are passed out. A high-level of security is also ensured though this setup. A student can attach his/her storage space to a particular instance to save any work done. Though a particular instance gets infected by a virus, the infection remains in that particular instance and does not affect other running instances. The deployment has also allowed the college to ensure optimum usage of bandwidth. Each virtual machine instance is allotted a fixed amount of Internet bandwidth, restricted to a few MBs in terms of data transfer caps. This ensures that students do not misuse the connectivity to download large multimedia files or software or surf unauthorized websites.

5. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

Cloud Computing paradigm is a new approach to produce a solution for old problems. This paradigm offers many benefits to enterprises, industries. But Cloud Computing can also be used for technical institutes. Deployment of private cloud in college campus has many benefits such as each student has his/her storage space in the cloud. Each student gets access to the educational resources like access to software as per the curriculum requirement on demand. Existing infrastructure can be reused. Thus there is no requirement of additional investments in hardware. This leads to significant reduction in annual budget. A few colleges have already started cloud computing technology for educational use. Thus, the main goal of presented prototype is; managing effectively the technological needs of colleges such as delivery of software, providing of development platform, storage of data, and computing. The private cloud is built using Eucalyptus Technologies. But it does not provide certain features that are peculiar in college environment like persistence of instances, reservation of instances etc. Thus future work could include building and enhancing features of cloud that suit for college environment.

7. REFERENCES

[1] Whie Paper on Eight Key Ingredients for Building an Internal Cloud VMware, May 2009 [2] Mehmet Fatih Erko, Serhat Bahadir Kert, Cloud Computing For Distributed University Campus: A Prototype Suggestion in International Conference on Future of Education, Firenze, June 2011. [3] Khmelevsky, Y., & Voytenko, V. (2010). Cloud Computing Infrastructure Prototype for University Education and Research. Proceedings of the 15th Western Canadian Conference on Computing Education. Kelowna, Canada: ACM. [4] Katzan, H. (2010). The Education Value Of Cloud Computing. Contemporary Issues In Education Research , 3 (2), 37-42. [5] Press Coverage, InformationWeek Magazine, www.informationweek.com, October 2010 [6] Behrend, T. S., Wiebe, E. N., London, J. E., & Johnson, E. C. (2011). Cloud computing adoption and usage in community colleges. Behaviour & Information Technology , 30 (2), 231240. [7] IBM Press. (2009, November 4). IBM Press Room. Retrieved March 21, 2011, from IBM: http://www03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/28749.wss [8] ZeroPC: http://www.zeropc.com/about.htm [9] A white paper on Texas College System Builds Private Cloud in Campus Technology Magazine, July 2011 [10] Virtualization: Press Release, Pacific Controls Cloud Computing Research Lab at TU Vienna, Cloud Computing Journal, July 2011. [11] itnews for Australian Business, UniWA consolidates to private cloud, July 2011. [12] Sam Averitt, Michael Bugaev, Aaron Peeler, Henry Shaffer, Eric Sills, Sarah Stein, Josh Thompson, Mladen Vouk, Virtual Computing Laboratory(VLC) proceedings of the International Conference on Virtual Computing Initiative, May 7-8, 2007 [13] http://www.redhat.com/f/pdf/rhev/DOC-KVM.pdf [14] B. Sotomayor, R. S. Montero, I. M. Llorente, and I. Foster, Virtual infrastructure management in private and hybrid clouds, IEEE Internet Computing, vol. 13, no. 5, pp. 14 22, 2009. [15] Eucalyptus Whitepaper: Eucalyptus Open-Source Cloud Computing Infrastructure - An Overview, Eucalyptus Systems, Inc., August 2009 [16] Cloud OS from VMware: http://www.vmware.com/products/cloud-os/ [17] Kernel Based Virtualization Machine[online]. Available at: http://www.linux-kvm.org/