Cloud computing for universities
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The document discusses a university cloud computing project that aims to provide researchers and students access to virtual servers, desktops, and applications through a university portal. This would help support research and education by reducing costs associated with hardware and software needs. The project team implemented a prototype using VMware virtualization at their faculty to offer virtual servers for student projects and applications, as well as virtual desktops for faculty. They hosted a conference on research clouds that was successful and sponsored by several technology companies.
Cloud computing for universities
- 2. Project Abstract INTRODUCTION Cloud computing is a relatively recent concept that has arisen out of developments in grid computing, virtualization and web technologies. The term covers an entire stack from infrastructure through storage, platforms, and applications. Of these, Software-as-a-Service has so far been the most successful in universities through outsourcing of email and collaborative functionality. However, it is cloud infrastructure and storage that are most relevant to this project. Clouds are characterized by on- demand deployment of virtual, flexible, highly scalable resources with a pay per use charging model. We’ll offer these services for Academic and Research sake for the students taking the advantage of cloud computing and providing them with access to the equipment they need in their research or IT projects such as virtual servers, desktops and applications they want to use anywhere and anytime they want to use it. Using Cloud Computing in business has achieved a big success in saving cost, complexity and time in the IT world, however we are thinking of cloud computing from a different perspective. We use Cloud Computing for the academic study and research purposes, expanding the cloud market share to reach everyone researching, studying and working in IT field. In Egypt we have more than 30 Universities, Cloud Computing for Universities will help facilitate the education and research process and will give the chance for researchers and students to innovate and enrich our IT development in Egypt. Our Project aims to adding new innovative features to the university website/Cloud portal which gives the professors, researchers and students the ability to order the servers, desktops and applications they need in their projects, and use it in just a few minutes. PROJECT IDEA/CONCEPT We are completing the graduation project of students of the last year that was mainly about implementation of the university datacenter including servers and network components. This year we want to develop the University data-center using the cloud computing/virtualization technology and show innovative use cases for this technology in Academic and Research purposes for all University researchers, students and staff. Why Cloud Computing for Universities? 1) Research and educational needs of universities change with developing technology. As a natural result of this progress: - New software cause new hardware costs. - Issues such as setup, configure, and transport the new software tools would cause to loss of the researchers’ workforce, and researchers do not focus their basic tasks. The large majority of university budgets are devoted to meet these needs. 2) The high expenses for students to purchase the hardware equipment needed to implement their IT projects that deprive them and the University from: - Having a real supportive environment for supporting and stimulating R&D system in the university. - The integration of the theoretical and experimental education in IT field. A problem that will continue to show- up every year and still have no solution and stand against achieving a great success.
- 3. Overview of system modules: In our project we will give different solutions to universities to stimulate Innovation and Green IT concepts using the Cloud Computing Technology and we will propose a cloud infrastructure prototype for them with different solutions to fit the existing infrastructure of the university through the possible cloud and virtualization solutions using: 1- Hardware module: Design and Implement a powerful Data-center of a very strong physical networking infrastructure with high levels of security to ensure a safe connection to user’s private or public cloud to reach the service/application he wants. 2- Software module: to implement the cloud infrastructure of the university we will use three different software solutions of virtualization: 1. VMware vCloud Solution (vSphere 5 & vCloud Director). 2. OpenStack Cloud Solution. 3- User Access module: Design and develop a University Cloud portal or add the academic Cloud services to the vCloud Director portal through which students or researchers can interact with the university cloud services and applications and log securely to their academic information. Project Features: Our project offers new features, services and applications for the University data-centers as: 1- We offered the virtual servers with variant specifications to facilitate the practical implementation of the large Graduation Projects that require powerful servers. Also for research programs and university IT administrators (including web, database, mail, DC servers, etc…). 2- We offered the virtual/Thin applications to facilitate the academic study in labs aiding students to work with the programs that need high processing requirements over the university private cloud environment. 3- We offered Virtual Desktops for researchers, professors and university employees. 4- In addition, the cloud computing reduces universities’ IT complexity, cost and some benefits of Cloud Computing can be listed: · Reduced implementation and maintenance costs. · Increased mobility for a global workforce, Flexible and scalable infrastructures · “Greening” of the data center.
- 4. The Inevitable Cloud Team Thinking of our graduation project, we all agreed that we have to work on a new promising technology related to our field and then ‘’Cloud Computing’’ technology came to the scene. We did our research and discussions, and designed a prototype of what we are going to do. We were totally convinced by the benefits of this technology that has shown a constructive revolution in networking. Honestly, we started thinking of Cloud Computing as it is used right now in the business world but we were facing the problem of having no fund to purchase the required servers and storage devices to implement our design, so it seemed useless to just go the theoretical way without real results or implementation of the idea which wasn’t accepted from all of us and it was then considered a disappointing ending. By the time, we realized that it was not just our problem and we have to find a solution to this problem facing all students working in the information technology field. Then a simple reverse thinking was the answer to our problem, why don’t the university offer the products used in Business Cloud Computing to its students? Giving them all the advantages of Cloud Computing but for the Academic sake that will help in the integration of the theoretical and experimental education and support the R&D systems in the university. And here comes the new idea for our project to give different solutions to universities to stimulate Innovation and Green IT concepts in the use of Cloud Computing Technology. Mohamed Mohamed Zein El-Dein mmzzain@gmail.com Cell Phone: +201114477470 Ahmed Mohamed Abo kamla Ahmed.abokamla@gmail.com Cell Phone: +201002838833 Abdelrahim Ahmed Abo-Douh abdelrahim.ahmed@yahoo.com Cell Phone: +201118013213 Mohamed Moheb El-Shorbagy Mohamedelshorbagy73@gmail.com Cell Phone: +201016693561 Amgad Salah Boshra Amin Eng.amgad2@gmail.com Cell Phone: +201285881925 Ahmed Hassan Abdel-Haddy ahmed_hasan316 @yahoo.com Cell Phone: +201281382649 Ahmed Shawky Anour hewedy ahmedshawky.fee@gmail.com Cell Phone: +201017034884 Emad Abdo Gaber Ahmed eng.emadabdo2012@gmail.com Cell Phone: +201095263701 Sadek Abdel-Naser Sadek Sadekabdelnaser@gmail.com Cell Phone: +201007467821 Haroun Ahmed Bakr eng_haroun2012@yahoo.com Cell Phone: +201001225129
- 5. “ I’m really honored to be the supervisor for such a great project and to work with those young promising engineers who has introduced to me this new era of Cloud Computing, It was my first time to work with such brilliant team and see that shine in their eyes and see how they work smoothly like in a harmony to achieve what they want“. Prof. Dr. Nawal El-Fishawy Project Supervisor and Head of Computer Engineering Deptartment at Faculty of Electronic Engineering. “ I’m very happy to be in such event that is to be held for the first time in Egypt, specially to be in a governmental university and we are honored to be part of it here with you” Mostafa Hashem Unified Storage Technical Support Supervisor at EMC2 “ The exist of those young promising engineers like “The Inevitable Cloud Team” who are looking forward to learning and applying new technologies is just the start for Egypt to regain its position in IT field specially during these hard time for Egypt” Sherine Bahader Head of Open Source Software Department at iTi What we achieved? Thanks to our open-minded Head of the IT Department in our Faculty, We have now reached a very promising point in our project implementation after having the access to use our Faculty’s local network and Servers to implement and apply our solution practically in our Faculty At this moment, We have transformed our Faculty's small classical datacenter into a virtualized environment using VMware Solution and offered: 1- Virtual servers for researchers and IT graduation projects. There are two graduation projects now that are working on our virtual servers and used in Mail and Database applications. 2- Virtual servers for using it as web, share point, DC, DNS and DHCP servers for the faculty datacenter itself. 3- Virtual desktops including win7, XP for professors/employees and for our Faculty's academic labs. 4- Thin applications such as Matlab and Netbeans for using inside the academic labs and for research purposes. The Inevitable Cloud Conference “The Inevitable Cloud” Conference is the 1st Conference for Research Clouds in Egypt that was organized by The Inevitable Cloud Team at the Faculty of Electronic Engineering, Menoufia University – Menouf on 15-16 May 2012. The Conference was the premier Cloud Computing event, covering latest trends and innovation in the world of Cloud Computing, providing global directions and best practices around the future of Cloud Computing with emphasis on Research Clouds’ rule in the development of the Information Technology in Egypt. The conference achieved a big success and was sponsored by a collection of multinationals, nationals and research institutes including: EMC 2 , Microsoft , Information Technology Institute iTi, Egyptian cloud computing center EC3, Wyse, TE Data, Raya and cloud11.