CloudLab Phase-IV: Strengthening a Core Resource for Research and Education

Cloud technologies underpin many of the apps and computing services that we use every day, including social networking, online commerce, email, video conferencing, and many more. To be able to do research that drives forward the fundamental architecture of the cloud, scientists need an environment in which they can experiment with the primary building blocks of the cloud: compute power, storage, and networks. CloudLab provides an environment where researchers can build their own clouds, observing and changing how they operate all the way to the bottom layers of software. CloudLab is a large facility, consisting, as of the start of this award, of more than 1,800 servers hosted at the University of Utah, Clemson University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. These servers include cutting-edge compute (such as several different processor architectures, graphics processing units, and field programmable gate arrays), networking (OpenFlow, user-programmable switching), and storage (hard drives, solid state drives) technologies. This phase IV award will support the expansion of this facility by several hundred servers to meet high demand. It will also add new technologies, such as Internet of Things devices, programmable network cards, and non-volatile random access memory, which will in turn support research on data-intensive computing and computing at the edge of the network. CloudLab is available to researchers who work on the fundamentals of cloud computing. These users do research in areas such as networking, security, and databases; in turn, this work has broad impact, as these are the fundamental technologies upon which we build things such as smart cities, telehealth, online education, and other socially important computer services. Because it is offered at no cost for research and education to academic users, it acts as a level playing field on which institutions large and small, and those with many resources and those with few, can conduct work on an equal footing. CloudLab can be found online at https://cloudlab.us/, which is the primary interface through which research users interact with the facility, making it accessible from anywhere. This award will support continued operation of the facility, including the aforementioned hardware expansion, development of new features, and user support. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.