CI-ADDO-EN: Enhancing Emulab for Virtualization and Clouds

University Of Utah, Salt Lake City UT

Investigators

Abstract

This project is enhancing the public Emulab network testbed to better support research and educational activities that deal with computer virtualization. Virtualization is transforming computing. Cloud computing, virtual desktops, and similar techniques are changing the ways people think about, provision, and purchase resources. Virtualization is a cornerstone of future computing architectures, so it is critical to promote research in this area. Although there is an abundance of virtual infrastructure today, there is a lack of public physical infrastructure on which to conduct sizable experiments in virtualization. Investigations into virtual-machine and cloud-management software require access to "bare metal" computer and network resources because the goal of virtualization is to abstract underlying physical resources. Currently, researchers and educators lack access to the modern, networked, physical facilities needed to develop the next generation of virtualization-based systems software. This project is addressing the need for these physical facilities. It is extending Emulab, an existing and Internet-accessible network testbed, to support widespread experimentation and education in virtualization technologies. Activities include acquiring modern hardware on which to conduct virtualization experiments, developing software to support this new hardware, operating the enhanced testbed, and performing outreach through open-source software releases and support to sites that run Emulab software. The enhanced testbed will support research and education toward new services that utilize virtualization: e.g., tomorrow's clouds, virtual machines, and Internet-based applications. It will enable thousands of researchers and students to run realistic virtualization-oriented experiments that would otherwise be impossible.