wiki:ProjTemp-4Q09-status

Version 1 (modified by Don Kline, 14 years ago) (diff)

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VMI-FED Project Status Report

Period: September 1 – December 31, 2010 (Q4 2009)

Overview

This QSR documents the progress by the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) for Project Number 1773, Virtual Machine Introspection (VMI) and Development of a Model Federation Framework (MFF) for GENI, a.k.a. VMI-FED. UAF successfully demonstrated VMI functionality at the sixth GENI Engineering Conference (GEC6), and is expanding VMI’s role in instrumentation and measurement by studying VMI functionality on virtual machine node clusters.

In addition, we started a resource analysis of the network ecosystem of the University of Alaska. Once complete, we will create a classification system that encompasses the myriad of resource types that exist across the state of Alaska. Furthermore, we are building a contact list that includes organizations for GENI federation.

I. Major accomplishments

A. Milestones achieved

This quarter marks the beginning of the project.

Three members attended GEC6, with a demo of VMI and posters describing the federation aspects of the project.

B. Deliverables made

11/15/09 - Demonstration of initial VIX (VMI) functionality in lab environment at GEC6

II. Description of work performed during last quarter

A. Activities and findings

Two graduate students were recruited to work on this project, and we are working on finding more interested students and staff.

VMI functionality was prepared and demonstrated for GEC6 along with posters to spread the news of our project throughout the GENI community.

Meetings were held with both the Chief Information Technology Officer, Steve Smith, and the Network Engineering Manager, Shawn Armstrong. Each pledged support for our project and gave us recommendations on who to talk to so that we could start gathering information about the university's resources that are across the state.

B. Project participants

MFF Principal Investigator
Dr. Kara Nance klnance@alaska.edu

VMI Principal Investigator
Dr. Brian Hay brian.hay@alaska.edu

MFF Research Assistant Lead
Donald Kline Don Kline

VMI Research Assistant Lead
Eric Taylor ektaylor@alaska.edu

C. Publications (individual and organizational)

Nance, K., B. Hay, R. Dodge, A Seazzu, S. Burd. Virtual Laboratory Environments: Methodologies for Educating Cybersecurity Researchers. Journal of Methodological Innovations. Vol. 4, No 3. pp 3-14 (2009).

D. Outreach activities

Dr Kara Nance was an invited participant in the US-Japan Workshop on Future Networks in Honolulu, HI. She presented a talk on The Future of Cybersecurity. The workshop included much discussion between Japanese and US researchers about potential collaborative efforts for research. A proposed research partnership between the ASSERT Lab and the Japanese StarBED labs was discussed and selected as an ideal collaborative project. Specifically, the researchers wished to explore the options for vertical and horizontal integration of StarBED with lab facilities in the United States, including the ASSERT Lab at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The goal of this effort would be to allow researchers to experiment with larger and more diverse network environments than are currently available today.

The starting point for this effort was to tie in with GENI as an investigation of the challenges inherent in managing and collecting data from diverse network laboratory resources. Ultimately, this could lead to the design, development, and deployment of a user interface which allowed users to transparently acquire, use, and monitor resources to build test networks from components chosen from a variety of geographically distributed laboratories, such as StarBED and ASSERT. In this manner, new resources added in one laboratory, such as the SCADA components available in the ASSERT Lab, would be available for integration with other resources in any other laboratory linked in the system. The positive attributes that this project could incorporate with GENI was discussed. (Chip Elliot, GPO, was also present at the meeting.)

E. Collaborations

F. Other Contributions

G. Goals

To perform a resource analysis on the ASSERT lab in order to facilitate our deliverable on February 1, 2010.

To get planet lab via myPLC running in the ASSERT lab and to begin researching ways to port the VMI library over to VServer so that it can be used with planet lab cluster nodes in our lab environment.