Towards Testbed as-a-Service: design and implementation of an unattended SoC cluster

The current computing power of single-board computers (SBCs) is relevant, and if this factor is associated with the very low cost of installing and operating such devices, building a cluster is a natural consequence. Very often in fog computing, researchers need to run and test their distributed solutions and algorithms in real hardware and software, rather than by simulations and doing this in a cluster of SBCs is feasible and inexpensive. This paper addresses most of the problems and issues that arise when building a self-contained, remote controllable and unattended cluster of Raspberry Pi that minimizes the physical intervention of a human operator, which enables the notion of Testbed as-a-Service. The solution envisioned here is to set up the cluster in a desktop computer case, which needs addressing power management and to allow remote configuration of experiments. Moreover, the paper proposes several guidelines for installing a suitable operating system and software for running any kind of distributed application.