A modular approach to build a hardware testbed for cloud resource management research

Research on resource management focuses on optimizing system performance and energy efficiency by distributing shared resources like processor cores, caches, and main memory among competing applications. This research spans a wide range of applications, including those from high-performance computing, machine learning, and mobile computing. Existing research frameworks often simplify research by concentrating on specific characteristics, such as the architecture of the computing nodes, resource monitoring, and representative workloads. For instance, this is typically the case with cloud systems, which introduce additional complexity regarding hardware and software requirements. To avoid this complexity during research, experimental frameworks are being developed. Nevertheless, proposed frameworks often fail regarding the types of nodes included, virtualization support, and management of critical shared resources. This paper presents Stratus, an experimental framework that overcomes these limitations. Stratus includes different types of nodes, a comprehensive virtualization stack, and the ability to partition the major shared resources of the system. Even though Stratus was originally conceived to perform cloud research, its modular design allows Stratus to be extended, broadening its research use on different computing domains and platforms, matching the complexity of modern cloud environments, as shown in the case studies presented in this paper.