ISSUE

05
May 2013

150

Key Facility Features

6 geographically distributed test-beds across Europe accessed in a uniform manner with single sign-on

this issue
Experimenting on BonFIRE P.1 Open Access P.2

Heterogeneous Cloud resources, including compute, storage and networking

Experimenting on BonFIRE testing your novel ideas

BonFIRE has successfully carried out two Open Calls for Experiments in which 9 Experiments and 1 cloud provider out of over 57 proposals were chosen. The experimenters in BonFIRE are already generating real impact, and we will explore in this article how BonFIRE is helping to do so.
BonFIRE is founded on four pillars to support experimenters in testing their Cloud applications for their research or business purposes: Observability: Understand the interactions heterogeneous resources, which are accessed in a uniform manner with single sign-on. This makes it very easy to experiment with federated Cloud applications, for example, which is one of the foci of the SILICON experiment conducted by the Institute of Communication and

Full control of your resource deployment. Spec your virtual machines as you wish and control the deployment

Exclusive access to physical machines, allowing you to experiment with contention

Computer Systems (ICCS). This experiment investigates and aims to optimise a service management approach for delivering Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees for large-scale

In-depth monitoring of virtual machines, the physical machines and applications

applications by means of adapting the resource provisioning at run-time.

Controlled networking by setting up bespoke network topologies, impairments and background traffic

between resources.

physical,

virtual

and

application

Another experiment interested in multi-Cloud deployments of services has been conducted by the Manchester Centre for Service Research (MCSR), investigating the creation of innovative services resulting from interactions between technology, organizations and people. The aim of the experiment was to investigate different service optimisation approaches to determine which better suited innovative service

Control: Establish your conditions for accurate and reliable testing. Advanced features: Unique features required

COCOMA to control the operational conditions for your Cloud applications

for future Cloud scenarios, such as controlled networking, custom VM instance types and controlled placement of VMs. Ease of use: Design experiments using a

Ease of use for through multiple client tools - Portal, Restfully, HTTP, Command Line Interface Tools and Experiment Descriptors

range of interfaces and seamlessly move between sites.

ecosystems. BonFIRE provided the possibility to emulate service ecosystems by geographically distributing components and services. In

One of the key features of BonFIRE is that experimenters have access to multiple sites that are geographically distributed and comprises

addition, BonFIRE also provided resources on demand, thus creating the dynamism of a real service ecosystem.

The BonFIRE Project Issue 05 May 2013

What are the Experimenters saying?

From the beginning we suspected there were limitations in our technology, but in our lab experiments we could not see them. Thanks to BonFIRE we are now able to see them and concentrate our efforts on future improvements
Prof. John Keane Expert in high performance and parallel computing MCSR University of manchester

Another advantage of BonFIRE offering a multi-site facility is experimenters can benefit from doing experiments on different sites that offer specific, unique, features suitable for different stages of testing. For example, experimenting with controlled networking at the iMinds Virtual Wall site and thereafter validating the results with public internet across different sites.

BonFIRE has successfully funded 9 experiments through two open calls and now welcomes anybody to apply for free access to our unique multi-site facility in our Open Access initiative!
the effectiveness of their technologies in a new

Controlled networking is key to some experiments, such as MEDIAFIRE by IN2 Search Interfaces Development Ltd. MEDIAFIRE aims to assess, from both a technical and business perspective, the feasibility of deploying software services for the creative industries in the Cloud. The experiment was designed to deploy, scale, validate and finetune their distributed multimedia management and publishing platform. For this, they first experiment

business area and to optimise their products.

With a similar aim to the TurboCloud experiment, CESGA came to BonFIRE to investigate the limits of their Cloud model based on virtual clusters. CESGA develops new useful

applications for the health sector that demands high computing capacities with a high QoS. For this the experiment Virtual Clusters on

The Fault-Tolerant Virtual Cluster solution will allow CESGA to produce new high throughput application services which delivers the expected Quality-of-Service to our customer. Even in the case that our own resources are exhausted, we can use Cloud to deliver the results on-time.
Javier Garcia Tobio Managing Director, CESGA

with controlled networking on the Virtual Wall. Thereafter, moving to multi-site testing, which they were able to do very easily due to the simple VM management process in BonFIRE.

Federated cloud Sites (VCOC) was deployed and tested on BonFIRE. They designed and tested a fault-tolerant Virtual Cluster architecture that adapts itself to the required QoS constraints, utilising multiple Cloud providers. A key outcome

Cloudium Systems and RedZinc are two SMEs who have performed a joint experiment in

of the experiment was to prove that the approach works and that federated Cloud infrastructures helps deliver a more stable service, improving on new services such as radiotherapy.

BonFIRE, called TurboCloud. They experimented with a combination of two technologies in the beta development stage to investigate QoS parameters related to delivering Desktop-as-a-Service. To measure the limits of performance, they needed real-life infrastructure that they could control. With controlled networking, they were able to validate

For more Information on past and current experiments in the BonFIRE, visit

http://www.bonfire-project.eu/innovation

"ExSec experiment results enable us to advise companies regarding the deployment of suitable Cloud solutions with the best security architecture that fit their cloud architecture and performance requirements"
Dr. Jean-Christophe Deprez Scientific Coordinator, CETIC

BonFIRE Open Access you can apply now!

Frustrated with black-box computation? Constrained by the size of your experimentation cluster? Let BonFIRE help!
We have launched Open Access, which is an initiative that allows anybody to apply to use this unique multi-site Cloud facility for free. You will benefit from in-depth monitoring and control that is not possible at other public Cloud providers. Moreover, BonFIRE is really easy to use, even for the more advanced features, allowing you to focus on your research or business problems.

For more information: bonfire@bonfire-project.eu http://www.bonfire-project.eu

We are currently offering experimenters access to up to 50 computes and 250GB storage for a period of up to 4 months. http://www.bonfire-project.eu/involved

2013 Fraunhofer FOKUS, The University of Southampton IT Innovation Centre, The University of Edinburgh, ATOS Origin and other members of the BonFIRE