Entries in 'xen'
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Just ran across an “interesting” definition of Nimbus:
“Client-side cloud-computing interface to Globus-enabled TeraPort cluster at U of C”
… in these slides: http://eucalyptus.cs.ucsb.edu/documents/eucalyptus-slides-wolski-cloud_expo_apr08.ppt
There is a Nimbus client (which can be replaced by an Amazon’s EC2 client), true. But most of Nimbus is server side software.
Teraport (and other Science Clouds) are not “globus enabled” but rather host the server-side components of Nimbus. Nimbus converts a set of hypervisors into what some will call an “IaaS cloud” or “open source EC2″ (Nimbus was released before EC2 but EC2 protocol support has been added due to customer demand).
The remote messaging modules (EC2 and a separate WS system) are hosted in a container that is based on Axis — some Globus Toolkit components also use that. This is a thin layer that provides marshalling/unmarshalling and security, converting messages to a common format for use with the framework independent “meat” of the Nimbus service (it could be hosted in another container).
See the FAQ, publications, and news if you would like to learn more about Nimbus.
Some interesting things in the new Xen road map.
[via Stephen Spector]
Besides the good stuff added to Nimbus, this release also introduces something called the AutoContainer which allows you to set up a Globus Java web services environment, from scratch and with security working, within about a minute (requires Linux/OSX and Java 1.5+).
The main new features provided in this release are tools facilitating the deployment, configuration and management of clouds. We also updated our implementation to match the current Amazon EC2 deployment. In addition, the release contains new documentation and bug fixes.
You can download the new release from:
http://workspace.globus.org/downloads/index.html
The full changelog can be found here:
http://workspace.globus.org/vm/changelog.html#TP2.1
For those who haven’t heard about the Xen 0wning Trilogy, make sure to check that out here and here.
In a followup post to some apparent misinformation being spread (Microsoft executive “rebuts” our research!), I was surprised by this comment:
Interestingly, if Mr. Riley only attended our Xen 0wning Trilogy at Black Hat, then he would notice that we were actually very positive about Hyper-V. Of course, I pointed out that Xen 3.3 certainly has a more secure architecture right now, but I also said that I knew (from talking to some MS engineers from the virtualization group) that Hyper-V is going to implement similar features in the next version(s) and that this is very good. I also prized the fact it has only about 100k LOC (vs. about 300k LOC in Xen 3.3).
Xen 3.3 has grown to 300k lines of code for the hypervisor?
At what point does the “tight security auditability” argument start to exponentially diminish for hypervisors in ring 0?
See the announcement: new strong internal interfaces and a new remote protocol implementation (compatible with EC2 clients) that can run alongside the WSRF based ones.
Check out the changelog and the new FAQ.
Go Ask ALICE, the iSGTW image of the week. (Funny headline, see Go_Ask_Alice).
Check out some screenshots here of Nimbus resources invovled in supporting this experiment. It’s a small part of things as you can see from the scope of the grid but exciting nonetheless. The AliEn based virtual cluster is now “one-click” and can be launched anywhere running a workspace cloud setup.
EUCALYPTUS - Elastic Utility Computing Architecture for Linking Your Programs To Useful Systems - is an open-source software infrastructure for implementing “cloud computing” on clusters. The current interface to EUCALYPTUS is compatible with Amazon’s EC2 interface, but the infrastructure is designed to support multiple client-side interfaces.
May 14th, 2008: EUCALYPTUS is publically demonstrated at the Open Source Grid and Cluster conference.
May 29th, 2008: Version 1.0 is released as a feature-limited binary-only beta.
http://eucalyptus.cs.ucsb.edu/
I am happy to announce the TP 1.3.2 release — the “cloudkit release” of the Workspace Service. You can download the new release from: http://workspace.globus.org/downloads/index.html
As many of you have probably noticed we have recently been sending announcements about the availability of compute clouds for scientific communities: http://workspace.globus.org/clouds/
In a nutshell, TP 1.3.2 allows you to build your own cloud. The main addition is a new “cloud client” for the workspace service which simplifies (and also hides) much of the workspace functionality to provide an EC2-like set of features. The new client also provides a limited form of “contextualization” (more coming in the next release!). We also provide a step-by-step “cloud guide” that allows you to configure your own cloud.
For a complete set of new features (many more but less significant) look to:
http://workspace.globus.org/vm/TP1.3.2/index.html#changelog
We look forward to hearing from you — and if you do decide to configure a cloud and would like help finding users, please do let us know.
Have fun!
The Workspace Team
–
Kate Keahey,
Mathematics & CS Division, Argonne National Laboratory
Computation Institute, University of Chicago
From workspace-announce:
I am happy to announce the availability of a science cloud (codenamed “Stratus” ;-) at the University of Florida. This cloud introduces a new feature: the use of virtual networks with virtual machines for cloud computing.
The cloud is available for members of the scientific community: to obtain access you will need to provide a justification (a few sentences explaining your science project) to cloud administrators at UFL. To find out more go to:
http://workspace.globus.org/clouds/
The cloud is currently deployed on a modest allocation of resources as a beta project. We welcome comments, feedback, and bug reports.
If you’re feeling adventurous, there’s a workspace service pre-release out (click on the pic):
From http://blog.xen.org/index.php/2008/04/28/xen-api-community-project/:
Several community members have contacted me recently about the Xen-API utilities. I looked into this and discovered a great opportunity for community members looking for a project to contribute to. So, I am announcing a new community effort to complete the development of the Xen-API utilities. If you are interested in working on the Xen-API project please email me at stephen.spector@xen.org and I will call a meeting in mid-May with all people interested to get the project underway.
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