Using VCL technology to implement distributed reconfigurable data centers and computational services for educational institutions

1. Abstract In the context of educational institutions, small distributed data centers and labs are becoming increasingly expensive to provision, support and maintain on their own. This leads to preferences towards centralized and integrated data center resource management and network access to the resources. In turn, the data centers are undergoing a transformation driven by the nature of the equipment in them, and by the way they are used. As the computational and storage equipment becomes more powerful and more densly packed, the power and cooling needs are growing as well. One of the challenges is how to provision, manage and deliver such a large amount of physical and virtual resources in an efficient way.