The Aneka platform and QoS-driven resource provisioning for elastic applications on hybrid clouds

Cloud computing alters the way traditional software systems are built and run by introducing a utility-based model for delivering IT infrastructure, platforms, applications, and services. The consolidation of this new paradigm in both enterprises and academia demanded reconsideration in the way IT resources are used, so Cloud computing can be used together with available resources. A case for the utilization of Clouds for increasing the capacity of computing infrastructures is Desktop Grids: these infrastructures typically provide best effort execution of high throughput jobs and other workloads that fit the model of the platform. By enhancing Desktop Grid infrastructures with Cloud resources, it is possible to offer QoS to users, motivating the adoption of Desktop Grids as a viable platform for application execution. In this paper, we describe how Aneka, a platform for developing scalable applications on the Cloud, supports such a vision by provisioning resources from different sources and supporting different application models. We highlight the key concepts and features of Aneka that support the integration between Desktop Grids and Clouds and present an experiment showing the performance of this integration.