53245927
Cellular disco: resource management using virtual clusters on shared-memory multiprocessors
Despite the fact that large-scale shared-memory multiprocessors have been commercially available for several years, system software that fully utilizes all their features is still not available, mostly due to the complexity and cost of making the required changes to the operating system. A recently proposed approach, called Disco, substantially reduces this development cost by using a virtual machine monitor that laverages the existing operating system technology. In this paper we present a system called Cellular Disco that extends the Disco work to provide all the advantages of the hardware partitioning and scalable operating system approaches. We argue that Cellular Disco can achieve these benefits at only a small fraction of the development cost of modifying the operating system. Cellular Disco effectively turns a large-scale shared-memory multiprocessor into a virtual cluster that supports fault containment and heterogeneity, while avoiding operating system scalability bottlenecks. Yet at the same time, Cellular Disco preserves the benefits of a shared-memory multiprocessor by implementing dynamic, fine-grained resource sharing, and by allowing users to overcommit resources such as processors and memory. This hybrid approach requires a scalable resource manager that makes local decisions with limited information while still providing good global performance and fault containment. In this paper we describe our experience with a Cellular Disco prototype on a 32-processor SGI Origin 2000 system. We show that the execution time penalty for this approach is low, typically within 10% of the best available commercial operating system formost workloads, and that it can manage the CPU and memory resources of the machine significantly better than the hardware partitioning approach.
8223639
Assignment-based partitioning in a condition monitoring system
A condition monitoring system tracks real-world variables and alerts users when a predefined condition becomes true, e.g., when enemy planes take off, or when suspicious terrorist activities and communication are detected. However, a monitoring server can easily get overwhelmed by rapid incoming data. To prevent this, we partition the condition being monitored and distribute the workload onto several independent servers. In this paper, we study the problem of how to make a partitioned system behave “equivalently” to a one-server system. We identify and formally define three desirable properties of a partitioned system, namely, orderedness, consistency, and completeness. We propose assignment-based partitioning as a solution that can handle opaque conditions and simplifies load balancing. We also look at a few typical partitioned systems, and discuss their merits using several metrics that we define. Finally, an algorithm is presented to reduce complex system configurations to simpler ones.
14183146
Replicated condition monitoring
A condition monitoring system tracks real-world variables and alerts users when a predefined condition becomes true, e.g., when stock price drops, or when a nuclear reactor over-heats. Replication of monitoring servers can reduce the probability that an important alert is missed. However, replicated independent servers can sometimes report “conflicting” alerts to the user, causing confusion. In this paper, we study the problem of replicated condition monitoring. We identify and formally define three desirable properties of a replicated system, namely, orderedness, consistency, and completeness. We propose new monitoring algorithms that enforce some or all of the desired properties in different scenarios.
9264591
Exactly-once semantics in a replicated messaging system
A wide-area distributed message delivery system can use replication to improve performance and availability. However, without safeguards, replicated messages may be delivered to a mobile device more than once, making the device's user repeat actions (e.g. making unnecessary phone calls, firing weapons repeatedly). Alternatively, they may not be delivered at all, making the user miss important messages. In this paper, we address the problem of exactly-once delivery to mobile clients when messages are replicated globally. We define exactly-once semantics and propose algorithms to guarantee it. We also propose and define a relaxed version of exactly-once semantics which is appropriate for limited-capability mobile devices. We study the relative performance of our algorithms compared to the weaker at-least-once semantics, and find that the performance overhead of exactly-once can be minimized in most cases by careful design of the system.
10038411
On personal data license design and negotiation
Web applications often require users to provide personal information for customization, identification, or completing a transaction. However, the way we disclose our information in current cyberspace does not allow us to control the usage, release and circulation of the information, violating the basic principle of personal information privacy. Online personal data licensing (OPDL) is a framework to bring the control of personal information back to individuals by requiring application and service providers to obtain a license from a person before collecting, processing, and using his personal information. In this paper we present the license design and automation of the license negotiation process.
2029604
QoS-based resource discovery in intermittently available environments
In this paper, we address the problem of resource discovery in a grid based multimedia environment, where the resources providers, i.e. servers, are intermittently available. Given a graph theoretic approach, we define and formulate various policies for QoS-based resource discovery with intermittently available servers that can meet a variety of user needs. We evaluate the performance of these policies under various time-map scenarios and placement strategies. Our performance results illustrate the added benefits obtained by adding flexibility to the scheduling process.
7949816
An energy-efficient middleware for supporting multimedia services in mobile grid environments
In this paper, we present techniques for exploiting intermittently available resources in grid infrastructures to support QoS-based multimedia applications on mobile devices. Specifically, we integrate power aware admission control, grid resource discovery, dynamic load-balancing and energy adaptation techniques to enable power deficient devices such as PDAs to run distributed multimedia applications. Our integrated solution adapts to dynamic changes in device energy consumption and unpredictable grid resource availabilities without compromising application quality of service (QoS). Our simulation results indicate that our power-aware grid-based approaches, not only improve QoS of mobile multimedia services, but also efficiently load-balance the grid resources.
10970909
MAPGrid: A New Architecture for Empowering Mobile Data Placement in Grid Environments
The rising popularity of mobile applications and devices has brought about an enhanced interest in infrastructure support for mobile computing. Our work focuses on the development of a mobile grid infrastructure called MAPGrid (mobile applications on Grids), where grid resources are exploited as proxies to enable advanced mobile applications. However, intermittent availability of grid resources presents challenges for data-intensive mobile applications. In this paper, we propose novel methodologies for placing mobile data on grid proxies. We introduce a notion of two-tier architecture for MAPGrid, where the upper tier captures grid related features and the lower tier represents features associated with mobile environments. We further develop an intelligent mobile data placement mechanism that effectively balances tradeoffs between replication cost and data access cost by leveraging knowledge of grid availability and mobile data request patterns. Through extensive experimentation, we illustrate the superiority of the proposed techniques over several popular data placement strategies.
15965432
Efficient key distribution schemes for secure media delivery in pay-TV systems
To provide secure media delivery in pay-TV systems, a large number of messages are exchanged for key updates in the conventional key distribution schemes. This is inefficient and costly when the client side (set-top box) uses a smart card with limited computing power. In this paper, we present three key distribution schemes for channel protection and secure media delivery in pay-TV systems. With the proposed schemes, encryption keys of the subscribed programs can be efficiently and securely distributed to the authorized subscribers. Only one message is needed to renew key in the key distribution schemes for subscription channel protection. In addition, we use simpler computation functions, including one-way hash function and exclusive-OR operation, for key updates to reduce the computation cost. With our key distribution schemes, only authorized subscribers can watch the subscribed programs correctly. Unauthorized subscribers have no information to retrieve the correct programs over the networks. Thus, service providers can charge their subscribers according to their subscriptions, and the illegal access of the media and video programs from networks can be prevented, based on the proposed schemes.