An Evaluation of the Cloud/IX Operating System for ARM-Based Data Center Servers

Abstract

A transition from costly hardware to a large number of inexpensive servers has become a dominant trend in data center design architecture, creating new challenges for data center architects and necessitating the adoption of fresh approaches. In this paper, we explore alternative approaches to designing distributed systems in the spirit of the Plan9 operating system. We begin with an overview of application and research initiatives such as the porting of Plan9 to the IBM Blue Gene/L supercomputer, the usage of Plan9 in data centers and clouds, and the development of distributed embedded systems. Then, we present Cloud/IX, an OS for ARM-based server systems that, like Plan9, is based on the Plan9 architecture and runs on top of a variant of Plan 9 called 9front. We also detail the infrastructure and findings of an experimental evaluation of Cloud/IX on a real-world, multi-server farm in a data center.