We would like to invite the ConPaaS community at large to attend the 1st ConPaaS workshop. This workshop will be held on Thursday June 13th in Amsterdam. As you probably know, ConPaaS is constantly growing with new features and possibilities being added every few weeks. The ConPaaS workshop aims to offer a forum for ConPaaS developers and users to meet each other, learn about recent developments, and have a chance to influence the roadmap for the next releases.

Registration:

If you would like to attend the workshop, please send an email to Guillaume before June 1st. There is no registration fee.

Program:

• 9:30-10:00: Opening + the state of the ConPaaS union (Guillaume Pierre + Thilo Kielmann)
• 10:00-11:00: ConPaaS architecture (Emanuele Rocca)
• 11:00-11:30: break
• 11:30-12:00: Latest news from the Task Farming service (Alexandru Uta + Kaveh Razavi)
• 11:30-12:30: Experience report from a happy ConPaaS user (Ian Johnson)
• 12:30-13:30: lunch
• 13:30-14:00: ConPaaS service development tutorial (Emanuele Rocca)
• 14:30-15:00: Latest news from the MYSQL services (Ales Cernivec)
• 15:00-15:30: virtual networking in ConPaaS (Renato Figueiredo)
• 15:30-16:00: break
• 16:00-16:30: The scalarix service and its resource provisioning mechanisms (Thorsten Schütt)
• 16:30-17:00: Dynamic resource provisioning for the PHP service (Hector Fernandez)
• 17:30-18:00: Planned extensions for the Harness, MC-data and COMMIT/ projects (Guillaume Pierre + Thilo Kielmann)
• 18:00-18:30: Closing and discussion on the roadmap towards the end of Contrail and beyond

ConPaaS provides a collection of scalable, cloud-ready services for hosting various types of applications. The previous release 1.0 already supported PHP, Java, SQL, NoSQL, Hadoop and TaskFarming services. Release 1.1 completes this with the XtreemFS POSIX file system service which allows ConPaaS applications to share data through files as in a single local machine.

Other major improvements are the introduction of the ConPaaS director which allows users to control their ConPaaS services entirely using command-line tools. This simplifies things for advanced developers and allows them to automate a number of common operations. Also, application developers can now fully configure their services by providing startup scripts to be executed automatically on newly created virtual machines.

“We are very proud of this new ConPaaS release”, says Guillaume Pierre, who is leading the research and development team. “Thanks to the newly introduced functionalities we are now ready to start eating our own dog food, and to rely exclusively on ConPaaS technology to host the www.conpaas.eu website.” The ConPaaS team in Amsterdam instantly took his word seriously and organized a grand dinner where “ConPaaS dog food” was served.

• All internal control communications between ConPaaS entities are now secured. This means that attackers will not be able to take control over a user’s services nor disrupt their operations.
• Similarly, by default the ConPaaS frontend is now configured to run over HTTPS rather than HTTP.
• TaskFarming service: this is a new service dedicated to the efficient execution of large number of independent tasks.
• Selenium service: this is a new service dedicated to the functional testing of Web applications.
• The PHP and Java services now have a new GIT-based method for code uploads.
• ConPaaS can now run in any availability zone at Amazon Web Services.
• The installation procedure has been greatly simplified with an install script which automates most things.

ConPaaS is a runtime environment for hosting applications in the cloud. It aims at offering the full power of the cloud to application developers while shielding them from the associated complexity of the cloud. ConPaaS is designed to host both high-performance scientific applications and online Web applications.  It automates the entire life-cycle of an application, including collaborative development, deployment, performance monitoring, and automatic scaling. Finally, it runs on a variety of public and private clouds, and is easily extensible. This allows developers to focus their attention on application-specific concerns rather than on cloud-specific details. For more information about the ConPaaS project as a whole we recommend this recently-published article.

To try the new release the simplest option is ConPaaS Online: new users can register and try the system for free during a limited period.

The ConPaaS team is busier than ever in building new functionality and in making ConPaaS an even better system. Stay tuned for the next releases!

Guillaume Pierre, Corina Stratan, “ConPaaS: A Platform for Hosting Elastic Cloud Applications,” IEEE Internet Computing, pp. 88-92, Sept.-Oct. 2012.

The university of Rennes 1 (France) has two open positions to work in the domain of Cloud computing, ConPaaS, and heterogeneous hardware:

• PhD position: Multi-resource optimization for application hosting in heterogeneous clouds.
• Postdoc position: Deployment and dynamic reconfiguration of cloud applications in heterogeneous clouds.

The application deadline for both positions is July 1st 2012.

The University of Rennes 1 (France) has an open position for a Postdoctoral researcher in the domain of cloud computing.

Title: deployment and dynamic reconfiguration of cloud applications in heterogeneous clouds

Description:

Cloud computing systems are currently composed of large numbers of relatively inexpensive computers, interconnected by standard IP routers and supported by stock disk drives. However, many demanding applications have now reached a fundamental limit in their ability to scale out using traditional machines. Future performance improvements will derive from the use of high-end specialized equipment in addition to standard hardware: GPUs of course, but also FPGAs, programmable routers, and advanced storage technologies. In this context the European project HARNESS investigates: (i) how cloud providers may offer such extremely heterogeneous hardware to its users; and (ii) how cloud customers may make use of these heterogeneous resources to run their applications such that they exhibit the best possible price-performance tradeoff.

The postdoctoral research will investigate the ways to describe flexible applications capable of executing on a variety of heterogeneous hardware resources. We envisage component-based architectures where an application may provide multiple versions of the same component dedicated to different hardware platforms. The researcher will investigate and build mechanisms to deploy such applications in heterogeneous clouds, and to dynamically reconfigure an application while it is executing. For example, an application may start over a set of conventional virtual machines, but when load increases it becomes more efficient to dynamically re-deploy it over an FPGA. The work will be based on ConPaaS, an open-source Platform-as-a-Service environment developed in another project. This position implies tight collaboration with other partners of the HARNESS project, who are in charge of offering access to a variety of heterogeneous hardware devices.

Note: This position is funded by the HARNESS European project. It will be realized in close collaboration with the other members of the HARNESS project: Imperial College London, EPFL (Lausanne, Switzerland), Zuse Institute Berlin, SAP (the world leader of e-business solutions), and Maxeller (an FPGA manufacturer). Note that this consortium is of exceptionally high quality.

Required qualifications:

• A PhD in large-scale distributed systems, Cloud computing or high-performance computing
• Excellent programming skills in Linux environments
• Good communication and writing skills
• Good command of English
• Knowledge of French is not required for this position.

Start date: November 1st 2012. The position is offered for a period of 1 year, renewable up to a maximum of three years.

Location: Rennes is the capital city of Britanny, in the western part of France. It is easy to reach thanks to the high-speed train line to Paris. Rennes is a lively city and a major center for higher education and research. The thesis will take place within the IRISA research center, which is internationally recognized for its research in the domain of information and communication sciences.

Contact: Guillaume Pierre (gpierre@cs.vu.nl). Please send a CV, transcripts of grades, and a description of your previous achievements in a domain close to cloud computing.

Submission deadline: July 1st 2012.

References:

ConPaaS: a Platform for Hosting Elastic Cloud Applications. Guillaume Pierre and Corina Stratan. Accepted for publication in IEEE Internet Computing, 2012 (to appear).

Resource Provisioning of Web Applications in Heterogeneous Clouds. Jiang Dejun, Guillaume Pierre and Chi-Hung Chi. In Proceedings of the WebApps Conference, June 2011.

Autonomous Resource Provisioning for Multi-Service Web Applications. Jiang Dejun, Guillaume Pierre and Chi-Hung Chi. In Proceedings of the International WWW conference, April 2010.

The University of Rennes 1 (France) has an open position for a PhD student in the domain of cloud computing.

Title: Multi-resource optimization for application hosting in heterogeneous clouds.

Description:

Cloud computing systems are currently composed of large numbers of relatively inexpensive computers, interconnected by standard IP routers and supported by stock disk drives. However, many demanding applications have now reached a fundamental limit in their ability to scale out using traditional machines. Future performance improvements will derive from the use of high-end specialized equipment in addition to standard hardware: GPUs of course, but also FPGAs, programmable routers, and advanced storage technologies. In this context the European project HARNESS investigates: (i) how cloud providers may offer such extremely heterogeneous hardware to its users; and (ii) how cloud customers may make use of these heterogeneous resources to run their applications such that they exhibit the best possible price-performance tradeoff.

The goal of this thesis is to explore ways to host flexible applications on heterogeneous cloud systems. An application may be hosted in different ways, for example by mapping it on an FPGA and a conventional storage system, or alternatively on a set of normal VMs connected to high-end storage systems using high-end programmable routers. We will investigate: (i) how to express the requirements of such flexible applications; (ii) how to predict the costs and performance they would exhibit in a number of possible configurations; and (iii) control systems capable of dynamically adjusting the use of resources according to the needs of the application and the availability of specialized resources. The work will be based on ConPaaS, an open-source Platform-as-a-Service environment developed by Guillaume Pierre‘s team in another project.

This thesis is funded by the HARNESS European project. It will be realized in close collaboration with the other members of the HARNESS project: Imperial College London, EPFL (Lausanne, Switzerland), Zuse Institute Berlin, SAP (the world leader of e-business solutions), and Maxeller (an FPGA manufacturer). Note that this consortium is of exceptionally high quality.

Required qualifications:

• Strong expertise in large-scale distributed systems, Cloud computing or high-performance computation
• Excellent programming skills in Linux environments
• Good communication and writing skills
• Good command of English
• Knowledge of French is not required for this position.

Start date: November 1st 2012.

Location: Rennes is the capital city of Britanny, in the western part of France. It is easy to reach thanks to the high-speed train line to Paris. Rennes is a lively city and a major center for higher education and research. The thesis will take place within the IRISA research center, which is internationally recognized for its research in the domain of information and communication sciences.

PhD supervisor: this thesis will be directed by Guillaume Pierre. Guillaume is currently working at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam but he will move to Rennes in November 2012.

Contact: Guillaume Pierre (gpierre@cs.vu.nl). Please send a CV, transcripts of grades, and a description of your previous achievements in a domain close to cloud computing.

Submission deadline: July 1st 2012.

References:

ConPaaS: a Platform for Hosting Elastic Cloud Applications. Guillaume Pierre and Corina Stratan. Accepted for publication in IEEE Internet Computing, 2012 (to appear).

Resource Provisioning of Web Applications in Heterogeneous Clouds. Jiang Dejun, Guillaume Pierre and Chi-Hung Chi. In Proceedings of the WebApps Conference, June 2011.

Autonomous Resource Provisioning for Multi-Service Web Applications. Jiang Dejun, Guillaume Pierre and Chi-Hung Chi. In Proceedings of the International WWW conference, April 2010.

• presentation slides
• exercices
• command-line tools (customized to use the SOCKS proxy):

TaskFarming lecture and hands-on session:

• slides
• handout

The Ibis e-Science Software Framework

• exercises

If you want to meet the ConPaaS team, register to the summer school and you are bound to know everything about this nice system! (in the second screen of the registration process, choose the course on “Cloud Technology”).