Tokai Academic Cloud:
An Experimental Intra And Interinstitutional Cloud Infrastructure
among National Universities
in The Tokai Region of Japan
Shoji Kajita, Ph.D
IT Planning Office, Institute for Information
Management and Communication
Academic Center for Computing and Media Studies
Kyoto University
Nagoya
Kyoto University
• One of the seven key national universities in Japan
• About 10,000
5,000 faculty, researcher & admin. staff
• About 16,000
23,000 under-graduate & graduate students
Kyoto
Osaka
Nagoya
Tokai Area = Central Part of Japan
500km
Tokyo
Tokai Academic Cloud Consortium
A Virtual Consortium Among Six ITCs in National Universities
Nagoya
Institute of Technology
Gifu University
Nagoya
University
Shizuoka University
Mie University
Toyohashi
Institute of Technology
※ Google Map
http://maps.google.com
Contributions to ICA Community
1. Describe the current experiences of Tokai
Academic Cloud under development
2. Propose a proxy type of Federated Shibboleth
Authentication Handler for Identity
Management of Consortium Cloud
3. Present our current activities on the use of
VCL for teaching and learning at Nagoya U
Emphasizing cultural aspects on implementing
intra and inter-institutional cloud infrastructure
from the view of Japanese H.E.
Tokai Academic Cloud
Challenges
for Higher Educational Institutions
• Severe Competition among H.E. institutions
in the world
– Due to the globalization of economics supported
by Information and Communication Technologies
• Severe Budget Cuts
– Due to the economic downturn caused by the
world’s economic crisis of 2008
Each institution must strengthen
its organizational power
with clear foresight and strategic visions
“Academic Cloud”
• We need to develop ``Academic Cloud'' as
cloud computing of the academia, by the
academia and for the academia
• The aim is to fulfill diverse needs from
constituencies and to accommodate the
complexity of academic and administrative
computing requirements with affordable costs
Academic Cloud Environment
Green IT
デー
タ
A
Cloud-type Academic Services
on Widely Distributed and Virtualized
Information Service Platform
Z
B
Disaster
Recovery
J
C
P
X
Higher TCO
J
C
A
C
Z
B
C
A
Z
P
デー
タ
B
T
R
X Univ Portal
B
IT HR
Develoment
Z
B
Y Univ Portal
J
C
Distributed
Computing
Resources
X
Z
J
Z
E
K
A
J
J
X
P
A
P
Higher
Security
X
J
R
デー
タ
T
E
K
デー
タ
Z
B
Z
C
Higher
Privacy
A
K
X
Z
B
デー
タ
Research Theme
C
X
X
P
P
Z
Nagoya Univ
Portal
Z
R
K
T
P
A
E
Users in Y University
Users in X
University
Users in Nagoya
University
Collaborative Academic Service Platform to proved wide range
services from HPC to Teaching and Learning
8
on Large-scale Virtualized Computing Resources
Tokai Academic Cloud Consortium
A Virtual Consortium Among Six ITCs in National Universities
•
June, 2009
– Having a meeting with the directors
(or the delegation) from each ITC
•
Nagoya
Institute of Technology
Gifu University
Nagoya
University
– Slected as a research project in the
grant program of Joint
Usage/Research Center for
Interdisciplinary Large-scale Information Infrastructure
– PI: The Director of Nagoya Institute of
Technology
– Center: Nagoya U
Shizuoka
University
Mie University
Toyohashi
Institute of Technology
※ Google Map
http://maps.google.com
October, 2009
•
September, 2009
– IBM Shared University Award
•
April, 2010
– Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research for
3 Yrs. (200K US$)
Background Started as a Research
• Most of national universities in Japan, a lot of
faculty in IT Center have been getting involved
in these operational issues
• Operation itself is the matter of Cloud
Computing
• Best practices are still unclear and research
issues must be there
Tokai Academic Cloud
Architecture Vision
Tokai Academic Cloud Consortium Portal
Calendar Service
Student Information Service
….
Course Management Service
Virtual Computing Laboratory
ePortfolio Service
Data & Storage Infrastructure
Consortium Cloud
Challenges on Inter-Cloud
(1) Operation
Coordination
(2) Data Coordination
(3) Automation
Authentication Infrastructure
YYYY
University
XXX
University
Shizuoka
University
Gifu
University
Mie
University
Toyohashi
Institute of
Technology
Nagoya
Institute of
Technology
Nagoya
University
Private Cloud
11
Three Tier Architecture
based on Open Source Products
Software-as-a-Service
(SaaS)
Service
A
Service
Z
Service
B
Middleware Infrastructure
Platform-as-a-Service
(PaaS)
Computing Infrastructure
Infrastructure-as-aService (IaaS)
Institutional
Private
Cloud
Consortium
Cloud
Data Storage
Infrastructure
Public
Cloud
Tokai Academic IaaS
2TB
2001:DF:…./48
Nagoya University
Campus Network
SINET L2-VPN
YAMAHA RTX1200
Gakuzoh
Osaka
133.6.47.253
YAMAHA RTX1200
mysql
spider2
DNS
DNS
spider1
VCL
Front-end
Gakuzoh
Kyoto
LAN2: 133.6.47/24
TAG 451
Gakuzoh
Nagoya
VMWare ESX
VMWare ESXi
VMWare ESXi
VMWare ESXi
LAN3: 192.168.80/24
LAN1: 192.168.70/24
2GB mem, 73GB HDD
VMWare ESXi
Gakuzoh
Kyushu
192.168.70.253
VMWare ESX
IBM x3350
VMWare ESXi
Gakuzoh
Hokkaido
IBM
BladeCenter
E
HS22 x 5
16GB mem
146GB HDD
Service Mgmt Network
LAN4: 10.0.70/22
VMWare ESX
VMWare ESX
VMWare ESX
VMWare ESX
VMWare ESX
VMWare ESXi
Gbit Hub
MGMT1
MGMT3
IBM
BladeCenter
E
HS22 x 12
IBM
BladeCenter
E
HS21/22 x 14
16GB mem
146GB HDD
16GB mem
146GB HDD
Gbit Hub
2TB+20TB
VMWare ESXi
VMWare ESXi
VMWare ESXi
VMWare ESXi
VMWare ESXi
VMWare ESXi
VMWare ESXi
Campus Network
Nagoya University
NAREGI Computation Nodes
Fujitsu HX600× 16
Fujitsu PRIMERGY RX200 ×6
Tokai IPv6 Academic
Network
Tokai Academic Portal
Tokai Academic Calendar
Tokai VCL
+100 Concurrent Uses Available Potentially
on About 30 IBM BladeCenters
(2) Identity Management
within Consortium Cloud
Tokai Academic Cloud
Authentication Infrastructure
Tokai Academic Portal
uPortal4
Enable SSO for Services
within Consortium Cloud
CAS
Server
CAS
App1
CAS
App2
CAS
App3
CAS
App4
CAS
App5
Tokai
LDAP
NU
Shib
NITech
Shib
CAS
App6
For orphan users
XXX
Shib
For
institutional
users
Three Main Reasons
1. CAS is better than Shibboleth within organization
– Various services provided through Consortium Cloud
require fine-grained authentication and authorization
rather than application container delegated
authentication
2. LDAP authentication is not allowed for outside
services (Shibboleth Authentication only)
– Strict security policy in Japanese institutions
3. VCL cannot use other authentication method
(Shib and LDAP) when using CAS
FederatedShibbolethAuthenticationHandler
as A Proxy Authentication
org.jasig.cas.authentication.AuthenticationManagerImpl.authenticationHandler
PW
Authentication
Authentication
Request
Public Key (X.509)
Federated
Shib
Authentication
Attribute Processing
Result
Person Attribute Group Service
LDAP
Person Directory Service
RDB
MS
20
Its Implementation
Access
200 (OK)
300 (NG)
ID
Password
A Shib SP
Protected by
Nagoya U
Shib
300 (OK)
ID
Password
Nagoya U
Shib IdP
• Still under development
• Could be an issue against security policy because it may
create a man-in-the-middle security hole
(3) Current Activities on Use of VCL
for Teaching and Learning
at Nagoya University
Tokai VCL
+100 Concurrent Uses Available Potentially
on About 30 IBM BladeCenters
Nagoya University VCL Pilot
• Currently, five professors have been
investigating the use in 2012 semesters:
– Mathematics (Mathematica on Linux)
– Signal Processing (Scilab on Linux)
– Image Processing (Scilab and OpenCV on Linux)
– Bio Informatics (PyMOL and Yasara on Linux)
– Media Literacy (OpenCast on Linux)
• See Paper for detailed background and
scenarios
PyMOL on Ubuntu
Cultural Aspects on Pilot
1. A Very Small Pilot
– Again, due to the lack of operation staff and
budgets
2. Use of Linux only
– A strong opposition to enter Campus Agreement
for dominant OS product
3. Use of Open Source and Shareware-based
Applications
– Limit of Budget
– Scalability
In Summary
Tokai Academic Cloud Consortium Portal
Calendar Service
Student Information Service
….
Course Management Service
Virtual Computing Laboratory
ePortfolio Service
(1)
Architecture
Vision based
on OSS
Data & Storage(2)
Infrastructure
IdM for
Challenges on Inter-Cloud
(1) Operation
Coordination
(2) Data Coordination
(3) Automation
AuthenticationConsortium
Infrastructure
Cloud
YYYY
University
XXX
University
Shizuoka
University
Gifu
University
Mie
University
Toyohashi
Institute of
Technology
Nagoya
Institute of
Technology
Nagoya
University
(3) VCL as a
private cloud
at Nagoya U
Consortium Cloud
Private Cloud
Efforts Continues on Tokai Academic Cloud!
Japanese version of EDUCASE has
established since February 2011
Alert Notification and Survivor Confirmation
as a First Cloud Service by AXIES Cloud SIG
Email Addresses
(University B)
Email Addresses
(University A)
Encrypted
Encrypted
Survivor
Confirmation
Survivor
Confirmation
Email Addresses
(University C)
Encrypted
LDAP1
LDAP2
DB1
DB2
Survivor
Confirmation
Reporting
Operation
(University A)
Survivor
Confirmation
Reporting
Operation
(University B)
Operation
(University C)
Common Spec
and Reference Implementation
Lessons
Learned
Common
Spec
Common
Spec
AXIES
Feedback
Open Source
Impl A
Impl B
Reference
Impl.
…
Feedback
System Ａ
Procurement Process
Opened to All Venders
System B
Different Impl and System
with the same spec
システム
システム
System
Customizable
The same Impl and System among different institutions
Survivor Confirmation
at Higher Educational Institutions
Survivor
Confirmation
Service
Services
Needs
Diverse
Communities
faculty, staff, students and administrators, …
A very good testbed to think about Academic Cloud
Large Scale Message Notification and
Confirmation Service
Constituency
Register
Confirm
Social
Media
Alias
Institutional
Systems
Reachable
Address
Database
Transmit
Maintain
Author
Central ICT Organization
Reliable
Status
Database
Detect
Social
Media
Report
Stakeholders at Crisis Situation
Crisis Situation
Institutional
Systems
Co-Development and Co-Operation
among AXIES Institutions
AXIES Consortium
Kyoto University
WG
Membership
Finance Mgmt
Private A University
WG
Membership
Private B University
National X University
Copyright Mgmt
National Y University
Public C University
System Requirements
Co-operation among
member institutions
Non-member
Implement
Maintenance
Hosting
Service
Incetance
LDAP
DB
Kyoto University