CRESS: A platform of infrastructure resource sharing for educational Cloud computing

Cloud computing is very attractive for schools, research institutions and enterprises which need reducing IT costs, improving computing platform sharing and meeting license constraints. Sharing, management and on-demand allocation of network resources are particularly important in Cloud computing. However, nearly all-current available cloud computing platforms are either proprietary or their software infrastructure is invisible to the research community except for a few open-source platforms. For universities and research institutes, more open and testable experimental platforms are needed in a lab-level with PCs. In this paper, a platform of infrastructure resource sharing system (Platform as a Service (PaaS)) is developed in virtual Cloud computing environment. Its architecture, core modules, main functions, design and operational environment and applications are introduced in detail. It has good expandability and can improve resource sharing and utilization and is applied to regular computer science teaching and research process.