Deployment of visualization software and GPU rendering on an OpenStack cloud infrastructure

Abstract

This paper presents the development of visualization software as a service on an OpenStack cloud infrastructure. Cloud service VisLT is developed for visualization of scientific results computed and stored on the private cloud infrastructure. The cloud services are developed by using Apache jclouds API to enhance management of cloud infrastructure and to increase accessibility of the visualization service. Xen hypervisor is employed for hardware virtualization, which creates an abstraction layer between the computing resources and the software services that use them. The GPU is virtualized as a PCI device employing direct pass-through technology on hardware virtual machines to ensure fast remote rendering, which is a key feature of distributed visualization systems. Extraction of crack surfaces is considered as a pilot application of the developed visualization service. The performance of VisLT measured on the virtual machines is compared with the performance attained on the native hardware.