Cloud in your box (Devstack, VMware Player)

Updated@29-02-2012: please use the commit fca0b641a733ff3f1b3697ca04ebffb65e6c20fa for horizon
Updated: devstack no longer support Ubuntu 11.04. more on [vpsee]


Recently, cloud computing is a buzzword for marketing. You can see it in everywhere: anti-virus software (namely the one called Kav...), Office 360+5, etc.
You may feel confused. Actually, cloud computing itself is a collective noun, and means nothing. The professional will classifier the "cloud" into three different types: IaaS(Infrastructure as a Service), PaaS(Platform as a Service) and SaaS(Service as a Service). In this article, we focus on the first one and build our IaaS cloud in our home computer.

Building a "cloud" does not require a powerful, in fact. You need a computer with VT-x / AMD SVM feature. Basically, a Core-i3 is ok.

First of all, you need to install VMware Player from VMware. Make sure you are install the version 5. Otherwise, the performance of the cloud is not acceptable.

Then, get a Ubuntu 11.04 server CD from Ubuntu. Install it with the help of VMware Player. It should not be difficult task as the Player will guide you in installation.

Finally, you need to install Devstack, a one-click-installed cloud testbed for Openstack (an open source cloud platform middleware) by:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install git
git clone git://github.com/cloudbuilders/devstack.git
cd devstack; ./stack.sh

Now you should got the management interface URL (eg. http://172.16.142.129/) and the corresponding username/password.

Happy cloud computing!!

SHA1 with SSSE3 acceleration

Just for recall, SHA1 include 3 steps:
1. initialize the hash value
2. a for-loop sha1_update, which each add 512-bit to the hash pool
3. finally do padding, appending extra 1 bit and appending the length of the message

Someone from Intel did SSSE3 acceleration Improving the Performance of the Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA-1) , which improves about 50%. For my workstation (i3-2100) , according to my OpenSSL CVS, the speed of SHA1 is around ~600MB.

In order to use original patch from the article (nearly the same mirror), just replace your step (2) with

void sha1_update_intel(int *hash, const char* input, size_t num_blocks );

Then compile the attached Assembly source using

nasm -f elf64 -o sha1sum sha1sum.c #OR
yasm -f elf64 -o sha1sum sha1sum.c

and link the .o to your program


Actually it ported to OpenSSL and was porting to kernel crypto:
OpenSSL CVS - Check-in [20937]
[PATCH v3 0/2] crypto, x86: assembler implementation of SHA1


Little benchmark using "openssl speed sha1"

The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
type             16 bytes     64 bytes    256 bytes   1024 bytes   8192 bytes
i3-2100, 3.1G, Ubuntu 11.04-amd64
sha1-noasm 41509.80k   102830.17k   192025.60k   246080.17k   272615.51k
sha1-0.9.8    42963.77k   119563.82k   245913.69k   347327.44k   380286.29k
sha1-cvs       92259.92k   222029.44k   416805.07k   537374.38k   586825.73k
i5-760, 2.8G, CentOS 5.6-amd64
sha1-0.9.8    34189.42k   102558.96k   227312.78k   326800.38k   373721.22k
sha1-cvs       86948.28k   212469.37k   382940.36k   478658.76k   515970.81k
Xeon W3520, 2.67G, Ubuntu 10.10-amd64
sha1-0.9.8    37745.02k   107145.20k   227622.96k   315530.95k   358102.73k
sha1-cvs       83978.67k   199786.96k   365259.25k   459923.91k   493331.01k
Core2 Quad, CentOS 5.5-amd64
sha1-0.9.8    33646.27k   100451.23k   227755.21k   332412.51k   385859.58k
sha1-cvs       74688.70k   173850.00k   317574.97k   401208.30k   436905.76k
Core2 Duo E7400, CentOS 5.6 i386
sha1-0.9.8    26966.17k    84344.87k   202065.04k   312690.22k   368893.56k
sha1-cvs      54377.91k   141416.44k   271153.15k   353743.53k   390078.93k
C7-M 1.2G,  Ubuntu 10.04
sha1-98k         4767.11k    13917.20k    30128.64k    42823.41k    48589.48k
sha1-cvs         9774.71k    22950.89k    40949.16k    51051.52k    55009.28k
sha1-98b_p     3616.33k    13747.16k    47283.20k   121266.52k   224901.91k
Nano 1.6G, src
sha1-no           20057.60k    51514.05k    99721.39k   130167.81k   142811.14k
sha1-padlock  37713.77k   114562.71k   259637.33k   379907.41k   438818.13k


sha1-noasm, sha1-cvs: OpenSSL Snapshot 20110918
sha1-0.9.8, Ubuntu 11.04: OpenSSL 0.9.8o 01 Jun 2010
sha1-0.9.8, CentOS 5.6: OpenSSL 0.9.8e-fips-rhel5
sha1-98b_p,  OpenSSL 0.9.8b with patch