Software Container Architecture for Distributed Mission Processes

The challenges posed by big data, both at the global and local levels, are viewed as critical challenges for the Department of Defense’s (DoD) ability to accomplish its future missions. In addition to recent advances in the area of photonic communication technologies that may provide efficient means for rapid processing of large data sets by facilitating efficient data movement, we argue that leveraging the developments in the area of containerization and virtual machine technologies must also form part of the solution to big data analytics. This is so not only because virtual machines and containers offer an elegant way for implementing large-scale parallel processing but also because their use offers substantive cybersecurity advantages. As we recommended in our initial white paper, the full advantages of these technologies will require that the solution architectures be optimized by considering all aspects of the system, including software, i.e., that they be holistically optimized. We also mention in this document areas where this type of holistically optimized combination of containerization and photonics could be a game changer for DoD. 1 Real-Time Information Extraction from Big Data, R. Rolfe, J. Shah, F. Loaiza, IDA Non-Standard Document NS D-5618, October 2015.