Three Ways to Improve the Efficiency of Virtual/Cloud Computing Lab
Wenhong Tian · 2008
Virtual computing lab (VCL) initiated at North Carolina State University (NCSU), is a virtualized, distributed and on-demand computing service architecture provided through Internet. As VCL related activities scale up to many adjacent states as well as to other countries including Canada and India, improving the system efficiency and utilization becomes an important consideration. In this paper, we consider the VCL consisting of m identical computing elements such as blades. Based on statistical and simulation analysis of real data from year 2004 to 2007, the VCL management system can be modeled by classical queueing systems. It is possible to use queueing techniques to reduce preloading time, control the service time distribution, dimension the size of servers etc. to improve VCL efficiency. In this paper, we analyze and show how to improve VCL system efficiency in three ways.