Cyberaide onServe: Software as a Service on Production Grids

The Software as a Service (SaaS) methodology is a key paradigm of Cloud computing. In this paper, we focus on an interesting topic - to implement a Cloud computing functionality, the SaaS model, on existing production Grid infrastructures. In general, production Grids employ a Job-Submission-Execution (JSE) model with rigid access interfaces. In this paper we develop the Cyberaide onServe, a lightweight middleware with a virtual appliance. The Cyberaide onServe implements the SaaS methodology on production Grids by translating the SaaS model to the JSE model. The Cyberaide onServe virtual appliance is deployed on demand, hosts applications as Web services, accepts Web service invocations, and finally the Cyberaide onServe executes them on production Grids. We have deployed the Cyberaide onServe on the TeraGrid infrastructure and test results show Cyberaide onServe can provide the SaaS functionality with good performance.