Servers

There are two servers involved in the public-facing GENI software suite hosted by the GENI Project Office (GPO). Both of these servers are virtual machines hosted in VMWare vSphere.

There are three virtual hosts split across two virtual machines, both living on the same physical host. The physical host runs VMWare vSphere software. The two virtual machines, including their DNS aliases, are listed here with their configuration:

Virtual Machine	DNS Aliases	CPUs	Memory (GB)	Disk (GB)	OS
nye.gpolab.bbn.com	ch.geni.net, portal.geni.net	4	2	10	Ubuntu 10.04
escobar.gpolab.bbn.com	shib-idp.geni.net	1	1	10	Ubuntu 10.04

The three virtual hosts each play a specific role in GENI:

Virtual Host	Purpose
portal.geni.net	GENI Experimenter Portal
ch.geni.net	GENI Federation Services (member authority, slice authority, etc.)
shib-idp.geni.net	GENI Identity Provider

Note that while theoretically possible to split the GENI Experimenter Portal and GENI Federation services across hosts, we have never run the software this way. It is likely that the two must be co-located or at least have access to the same database. We consider conditions that force this co-location to be bugs, however, and given time and resources it would be good to fully separate the two pieces.

Software

Given the distinct purposes for each virtual host (see table above), here is the software running on each. Note that portal.geni.net and ch.geni.net share a common database, are served by a single apache installation, and share one copy of gcf/omni.

portal.geni.net

• Apache 2.2
• PostgreSQL 8.4
• Shibboleth service provider 2.4.3
• ​GPO Portal (proto-ch) (PHP)
• ​GPO GCF/Omni (Python)
• ​Detailed list of software dependencies

ch.geni.net

• Apache 2.2
• PostgreSQL 8.4
• ​xml-signer software for signing speaks-for credentials (JavaScript)
• ​libabac 0.1.6 ABAC library and prover (C, Python, Java)
• ​AMSoil
• ​GPO Federation services (chapi) (Python)
• ​GPO GCF/Omni (Python)
• ​Detailed list of software dependencies

shib-idp.geni.net

• Shibboleth identity provider 2.3.8
• Tomcat 6.0
• Java 6 (OpenJDK) 6b27
• Apache 2.2
• PostgreSQL 8.4
• Open LDAP 2.4
• ​GPO Account Request system (geni-ar) (PHP)
• Dependencies of the above (numerous software packages typically installed by apt)

Miscellaneous

Some thinks we all need to keep in mind:

• portal.geni.net is an InCommon service provider and is included in the InCommon federation. We may have to transfer the InCommon membership.
• It's very useful to have development, staging, and production hosts. We use that model internally.
• There is an "operator" privilege level that allows some individuals to:
  • Run certain maintenance scripts
  • Access the portal during a maintenance outage
  • Access any project or slice
• We should provide a list of ports in use by the different servers
• Certificates are tied to the ch.geni.net hostname