Open Cirrus^TM Cloud Computing Testbed: Federated Data Centers for Open Source Systems and Services Research

There are a number of important and useful testbeds, such as PlanetLab, EmuLab, IBM/Google cluster, and Amazon EC2/S3, that enable researchers to study different aspects of distributed computing. However, no single testbed supports research spanning systems, applications, services, open-source development, and datacenters. Towards this end, we have developed Open Cirrus, a cloud computing testbed for the research community that federates heterogeneous distributed data centers. Open Cirrus offers a cloud stack consisting of physical and virtual machines, and global services, such as sign-on, monitoring, storage, and job submission. By developing the testbed and making it available to the research community, we hope to help spur innovation in cloud computing and catalyze the development of an open source stack for the cloud.