A Parallel/Distributed Platform for University Computational Infrastructure Service Provisioning *
D. Koulopoulos, George Goulas, Efthymios Housos · 2002
The use of strongly interconnected computers, typically within a local area network environment, for the formation of computer clusters has been in use for several years with significant success and user acceptability. The availability of high bandwidth interconnection network among most University departments allows the creation of even larger such computer clusters. In this paper we present a system that can be used to effectively utilize the various computer resources that exist within a typical University environment for the formation of a parallel/distributed computing platform. The proposed system named PLEIADES allows its users to transparently utilize various computer resources in order to form virtual clusters for their parallel/distributed computational needs. In addition, PLEIADES can be also used as a computational infrastructure service provider (CISP) for automatic use by a remote computer process and in particular an application service providing (ASP) support scheme. The main design, architecture and implementation issues of the PLEIADES system are presented.