Towards enabling Cyberinfrastructure as a Service in Clouds

A modern cyberinfrastructure is normally viewed as a highly complicated system due to complex user interfaces, heterogeneous and distributed software implementation flavors, and different hardware platforms. To mitigate the difficulties of developing a cyberinfrastructure, this study proposes a new computing paradigm: Cyberinfrastructure as a Service (CaaS), i.e., providing a service to enable building a cyberinfrastructure on demand. The paradigm of CaaS has been developed a lightweight as a distributed middleware, namely Cyberaide Creative. The Cyberaide Creative service can on-demand create distributed virtual machines, install operating systems, deploy user-required software, and finally deliver a cyberinfrastructure to users. We demonstrate the its usage via a real application, the Emergency Services Directory (ESD) system, and test it with a High Performance Computing (HPC) benchmark. Experimental results justify the design of CaaS and the implementation of the Cyberaide Creative service.

► This paper proposes a new computing paradigm of “Cyberinfrastructure as a Service”.
► This paper implements a lightweight middleware, the Cyberaide Creative.
► This paper develops an application of Emergency Services Directory as a case study.