Deploying Virtual Clusters through P2P-based Content Distribution

Existing virtual clusters and computer clouds usually depend on small groups of (or even single) data repositories for their virtual machine and software deployments. This paper proposes a Peer-to-Peer (P2P)-based approach for publishing, querying, and deploying both virtual machine (VM) images and application-specific packages, dubbed the P2P Virtual Cluster Deployment System (PVC-DS). The approach is built upon typical Distributed Hash Table (DHT) infrastructures, using a modified content distribution system to allow for extensible VM definitions and range query capabilities. Evaluation results demonstrate its significant reduction in VM operating-system image and application-specific package download times at the expense of negligible traffic overhead.