Re: [Xen-users] Announcing the first release of SnowFlock

["Javier Guerra" <javier@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Sep 12, 2008 at 3:09 PM, Andres Lagar-Cavilla
<andreslc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> More technically:
> Snowflock is our prototype implementation of the / Impromptu Cluster (IC)/
> abstraction. In an IC, an application encapsulated inside a virtual machine
> (VM) is swiftly forked into multiple copies that execute on different
> physical hosts, and then disappear when the computation ends. ICs simplify
> the development of parallel applications and reduces management burden by
> enabling the instantiation of new stateful computing elements: workers that
> need no setup time because they have a memory of the application state
> achieved up to the point of forking. This approach combines the benefits of
> cluster-based parallelism with those of running inside a VM.
>
> Snowflock provides swift parallel VM cloning that makes it possible for
> Internet applications to deliver near-interactive performance for
> resource-intensive highly-parallelizable tasks. Snowflock makes use of four
> key techniques: /VM descriptors/ (condensed VM images that allow for
> sub-second suspension of a running VM and resumption of a of replicas); a
> /memory-on-demand/ subsystem that lazily populates the VM's memory image
> during runtime; a set of / avoidance heuristics/ that minimize the amount of
> VM memory state to be fetched on demand; and a /multicast distribution/
> system for commodity Ethernet networking hardware that makes the overhead of
> instantiating multiple VMs similar to that of instantiating a single one.

just reading the docs.... i find it nice how you can drive the
duplication of VMs from within the VM.  great for grids.

could you elaborate about the memory-on-demand? i couldn't find
anything about it on the manual, and it seems like a major advantage.

-- 
Javier

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