Model for on-demand virtual computing architectures - OVCA

High performance computers are becoming popular for non scientific areas. Growth of computer capacity, virtualization techniques, and network capacity, give an opportunity to exploit the potential of those systems and to integrate different concepts for improving resource utilization. In this paper, we propose an architecture which manages groups of distributed resources, deploying infrastructures on-demand. Resources, no matter if they are local or remote, physical or virtual, are managed homogeneously. Highly customized environments are dynamically created to fulfill clientpsilas requirements, by means of virtual machines. The proposed architecture is based on distributed systems not linked to any specific implementation, which offers high flexibility and applicability. A functional prototype has been implemented and tested at our lab. Evaluation results demonstrate that our initial assumptions are correct.