Pushing to the Limits

Just a couple of days back, me and the rest of the MOINC team conducted a large scale performance testing round for MOINC at the advanced computing lab of the Department of CSE, University of Moratuwa. We used over 20 PCs for our tests and the resulting numbers we obtained were pretty amazing. My friend and colleague Aravinda is already in the process of analyzing the statistics collected and we hope to compile a research paper based on the results. We will be publishing the details regarding the experiments as well as the collected data soon on our website in a more aesthetically pleasing manner. In the meantime I would like to say that we as the developers are very happy regarding the level of scalability the prototype MOINC platform has displayed during the tests.

Following are some of the pictures that were taken during the performance testing round. The sight of the MOINC screen saver coming up in about 20 PCs at the same time was truly a treat to the eye :)

I thank our department head, Mrs. Vishaka Nanayakkara and officer in charge of the advanced computing lab, Mr. Ananda Fransiscu for all the support in carrying out this round of testing.

Get Ready to Get MOINCed

Few weeks back me and my team managed to finalize developing the first prototype of our dream project, MOINC. If you are clueless as to what project MOINC is all about, it is an attempt to combine the Web Services paradigm with grid computing. The goal of the project is to be able to deploy enterprise Web Services for high availability and high scalability using commodity hardware. So far we have done three formal presentations describing each of the major components of the MOINC platform and we have written three research papers which we hope to publish very soon. In addition to the presentations we also conducted a formal demonstration of MOINC at University of Moratuwa, using 6 computers which effectively gave a preview of MOINC in action to a panel headed by our project supervisor Dr. Sanjiva Weerawarana and our senior lecturer Dr. Chathura De Silva. Presentations were attended by Dr. Sanath Jayasena, Dr. Chandana Gamage, Dr. Chathura De Silva and Mr. Shantha Fernando of the department of CSE, University of Moratuwa.

We got pretty good feedback from all those who attended the presentations and the demonstration, clearly indicating that we are on the right track to make MOINC into a useful software solution for business organizations worldwide. Some of the core features of the MOINC platform that we demonstrated are listed below.

1. Deploy, manage and undeploy service artifacts (Service artifacts are uploaded as Axis archives - *.aar files)
   
2. Track down idling computers in the local network and add them to the MOINC grid dynamically
   
3. Download service artifacts into idling computers from a centralized registry/repository
   
4. Action script based screen saver for client PCs
   
5. Load balance the incoming service requests among all the active nodes connected to the MOINC grid (Powered by Apache Synapse)
   
6. Monitor the grid via an AJAX based Web interface (Powered by WSO2 WSF/AJAX)
   
7. Collect statistics related to computers connected to the MOINC grid and use them in the intelligent load balance mode
   
8. MOINC community portal and forums (backed by WSO2 Registry and JForum)
   

That’s certainly a lot of features for a mere prototype. No wonder we got pretty good feedback. However there is certainly lot more work to be done. We need to improve the overall security of the platform. Currently there is a couple of security loop holes in MOINC SMM that we need to close off. Also Dr. Sanjiva suggested writing a Java security manager for MOINC client agent which ensures the security of PCs connected to the MOINC server. We need to start working on that soon as well. Also we have to finish our Maven2 integration stuff and get the release artifacts for MOINC 0.1-alpha out soon. We still haven’t cut the release artifacts for all the components of MOINC but the full source code of the prototype can be checked out from our SVN. Also checkout the developer resources section on our website for all the slides we used for the above mentioned three presentations.

I will also make arrangements for all of you humble readers to have a sneak peak at our research papers before we actually publish them. I promise. Meanwhile enjoy the presentations and other design documents :)

University of Moratuwa Climbs to the Top with GSoC 2008

For years University of Moratuwa in Sri Lanka has been doing a kick-ass job in the process of converting talented youngsters in Sri Lanka into world class computer engineers and IT professionals. It is not a secret that out of all the IT education centers in the country University of Moratuwa is the best in the business. Graduates passed out from the University of Moratuwa can be found virtually in any software firm in Sri Lanka and every year a significant number of University of Moratuwa graduates end up joining some of the finest organizations and universities in the world.

Talking about kicking butt, this time around University of Moratuwa has managed to kick some really serious butt big time. Being able to secure the first place in the Google Summer of Code 2008 (GSoC 2008) top participants list is no ordinary thing. According to the latest statistics from Google it is from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka that the largest number of GSoC 2008 applications has been received. The blistering number of applications is 93! The second place of this list goes to University of Campinas, Brazil. 29 applications have been received from University of Campinas. So clearly University of Moratuwa is way ahead from the rest of the world with this regard.

Also Google has declared that University of Moratuwa has forwarded the largest number of winning GSoC 2008 applications. There are 23 winning applications from University of Moratuwa this year from which 18 are from the department of Computer Science and Engineering. I personally feel very proud of this achievement and feel really happy about myself for being able to be one of those 18 winners.

Sri Lanka is among the top 10 GSoC 2008 participant countries this year. Sri Lanka is holding this position along with countries like USA, Canada and India who are at the frontier of the global IT industry. However out of all the IT education institutes in Sri Lanka only University of Moratuwa has earned a position in the top 10 GSoC 2008 participant institutes list. This is an clear indication of the level of excellence University of Moratuwa has reached over the past couple of decades in terms of quality of education. In addition to that this achievement by the University of Moratuwa is an indication of the fact that a new generation of computer engineers and IT professionals who appreciate and support open source software is being created at Sri Lanka.