Dynamic deployment of scientific workflows in the cloud using container virtualization

Qasha, R; Cala, J; Watson, P

doi:10.1109/CloudCom.2016.0052

Dynamic deployment of scientific workflows in the cloud using container virtualization

Lookup NU author(s): Rawaa Qasha, Dr Jacek Cala ORCiD, Professor Paul Watson ORCiD

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Abstract

© 2016 IEEE. Scientific workflows are increasingly being migrated to the Cloud. However, workflow developers face the problem of which Cloud to choose and, more importantly, how to avoid vendor lock-in. This is because there are a range of Cloud platforms, each with different functionality and interfaces. In this paper we propose a solution - a system that allows workflows to be portable across a range of Clouds. This portability is achieved through a new framework for building, dynamically deploying and enacting workflows. It combines the TOSCA specification language and container-based virtualization. TOSCA is used to build a reusable and portable description of a workflow which can be automatically deployed and enacted using Docker containers. We describe a working implementation of our framework and evaluate it using a set of existing scientific workflows that illustrate the flexibility of the proposed approach.