Resource Management and Virtualization

   CONTENTS  

High performance computing

The Group on Resources Management and Virtualization (GGRV), chaired by Professor César Augusto Fonticielha De Rose, began in 1998. At that time, the group focused on the management of computer clusters (sets of several computers working in parallel) to supply high performance computing power. In the beginning of 2006, with the emergence of computing grids (a distributed computing system that uses idle machines to process large amounts of information), the scope of the group became wider.

In recent years, techniques were explored in computing cloud environments to improve the use of resources and reduce the costs related to energy consumption. Currently, the GGRV works in areas such as virtualization; the management of resources, provisioning, and dynamic allocation; techniques for monitoring and modeling applications; and programming and optimization in distributed parallel environments.

GGRV founded and currently coordinates the High Performance Laboratory of PUCRS (Laboratório de Alto Desempenho - LAD), which has powerful computers to meet large research computing demands. Studies in bioinformatics, engineering, chemistry, and physics benefit from the precision and agility of computed simulations at LAD, overcoming the limits of calculations and performing more sophisticated experiments. The search for the best methods is constant: which equipment must be changed and purchased, what are the necessary configurations, how to make them available to researchers who are alien to the computer science, and other concerns.

The group contributes to several projects concerning calculus that Petrobras conducts with other PUCRS Schools, including Physics, Engineering, and Biosciences. GGRV also performs tests on topics related to safety, such as simulations of radiation and its effects. Other partners include private companies such as Hewlett Packard (HP), Dell, Microsoft, and NeoGrid.