Deploying Virtual Clusters through P2P-based Content Distribution

Abstract

Existing virtual clusters and computer clouds usually depend on small groups of (or even single) data repositories for their virtual machine and software deployments. This paper proposes a Peer-to-Peer (P2P)-based approach for publishing, querying, and deploying both virtual machine (VM) images and application-specific packages, dubbed the P2P Virtual Cluster Deployment System (PVC-DS). The approach is built upon typical Distributed Hash Table (DHT) infrastructures, using a modified content distribution system to allow for extensible VM definitions and range query capabilities. Evaluation results demonstrate its significant reduction in VM operating-system image and application-specific package download times at the expense of negligible traffic overhead.