You may or may not have seen my tweet about submitting a Workshop for LISA 16. On June 6th I was notified that my workshop was accepted. I’ve been a little per-occupied with work till now to get details up about the workshop.

Proposal for #LISA16 submitted on #VR for the data center. What can your #GPU do?

— Tony Foster (@wonder_nerd) April 26, 2016

That said, I figured folks would like a chance to read my abstract for the workshop. And if they are interested in attending it possibly register to attend LISA 16.

The overall intent of the workshop is to start developing a framework around using GPUs and their processing capabilities to improve capabilities in the data center, be it virtual or physical. The ideas presented below are just some of the possibilities for workshop attendees to consider.

It would be great to get feedback and ideas on this workshop prior to LISA 16. If you have any please add them to the comments at the end of the post.

I look forward to seeing folks at the workshop.

Tony

What follows is the content of my workshop submission, less my contact information. This may also serve as a resource for those looking to submit for future usenix conferences.

Proposal Type:

Workshop Half Day

Title of Proposal:

Data Center Virtual Realities: What Could They Look Like?

Proposal Description:

In this half-day workshop we will work toward developing how Virtual Reality (VR) can be leveraged in the Data Center to change how both users and data centers operate. As a team we will see what VR technologies (like Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), Oculus Rift, Google Cardboard, and others) we could use to create new realities in data centers.

Some of the new realities we might want to consider as part of VR in the data center include, visualizing cloud structures and virtualized environments; real time system diagnostics; and self-learning/healing data centers. All of which could impact how the group investigates applying VR in the data center. The group may want to probe further into each of these areas.

Cloud Structures and Virtualized Environments:

As the idea of the cloud permeates our society the question can be asked, how do we comprehend cloud structures? After all resources are shared and maybe spread between multiple locations. What does this mean to the group as we delve into VR in the data center? We may want to consider how can virtual reality help provide a single view of these cloud structures? What would they look like in a new cloud reality? What other facets of cloud visualization do we need to consider as a group so we can lay the foundation for VR in a cloud based data center?

Real Time System Diagnostics:

Of course these cloud worlds are all built on physical systems in a data center somewhere. How does the group take this into account? These data centers are filled with rows and rows of identical hardware with glowing lights blinking on and off to the hum of a song we cannot hear. What could this group devise to change someone’s experience in the data center? Are their existing technologies or standards we could use to augment how the data center is viewed, such as Oculus Rift or Google Glass? What could this group devise to make data centers run more efficiently by leveraging virtual reality?

Self-learning/Healing Data Centers:

Being able to visualize areas of concern in the data center could be powerful. What if the datacenter was able to learn and heal its self? Could this group discover a way to leverage deep learning, GPUs, and the throngs of data generated by components in the data center to make it more intelligent? What attributes would be needed so the data center could understand and react to changes possibly maintaining or improving the data centers health autonomously?

It would be interesting for this group to investigate other possible ways this learning and healing could be applied to virtual reality in the data center. What things would be helpful to have the data center respond to on its own? How could the group facilitate the creation of a reusable construct, enabling new self-learning models for the data center? What new cloud structures would start to grow from an analytical data center and what would they look like?

Each of these highlighted areas are interconnected. What the team will need to explore is how to unify them to create a new virtual reality in the data center. As we find answers in one area it can unlock new horizons in another area. Come and explore the virtual reality of data centers and see what develops.

The broad topic category this presentation addresses:

Architecture

Who Should Attend This Presentation?

Engineers with understanding of or experience in any of the following Virtual Reality (VR)/Augmented Reality (AR), Deep Learning/Artificial Intelligence (AI), or GPU parallel programming/GPU Computing Applications interested in working on applying these technologies to the data center.

Take Back to Work (What skills or knowledge will attendees take back to work?):

Attendees will take back perspectives and new ideas on how they can use Virtual Reality in the data center. The team will also take back results from our exploration of virtual reality in the datacenter. The team should also plan to use the results and output from this session to expand upon the work done to share with the community by means of white papers; presentations at conferences; and articles for publication in ;login:. Depending on how far the team gets during the session, development of a possible construct to repeatedly apply VR concepts to the data center.