wiki:GENIConcepts

Version 11 (modified by Vic Thomas, 11 years ago) (diff)

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Key GENI Concepts

This page introduces GENI concepts and terms you will need to know before you use GENI. For a glossary of GENI terms, see https://portal.geni.net/secure/glossary.html.

The GENI Portal

A web-based tool for experimenters to create accounts,

Project

A project organizes research in GENI, containing both people and their experiments. A project is led by a single responsible individual: the project lead. A project may have many experimenters as its members. An experimenter may be a member of multiple projects. The project lead is is ultimately accountable for all actions by project members in the context of the project.

The following figure illustrates a situation where a professor is the lead for two GENI projects Alpha and Beta. Each project has one of the professor's research assistant as a member. The professors and his post-doc are members of both projects.

No image "ProjectGraphic.png" attached to GENIConcepts

Slice

GENI is a shared testbed i.e. multiple experimenters may be running multiple experiments at the same time. This is possible because of the concept of a slice. A GENI slice is:

  • The unit of isolation for experiments. A GENI experiment lives in a slice. An experiment in one slice is isolated from experiments in other slices.
  • A container for resources used in an experiment. GENI experimenters add GENI resources (compute resources, network links, etc.) to slices and run experiments that use these resources. An experiment an only use resources in its slice.
  • A unit of access control. The experimenter that creates a slice

An experiment lives in a slice and experiments in one slice are isolated from experiments in other slices.

This is possible because of the concept of a slice in GENI. A slice consists of GENI resources (compute resources, network links, etc.) and a GENI experiment uses the resources in a slice.

the set of GENI experimenters entitled to act on those resources. A slice belongs to a single project, and can have multiple members. A project can have multiple slices.

  • Experiments live within slices i.e. they use resources reserved by their slice.
  • Slices isolate experiments. GENI is a shared testbed and slices ensure experimenters do not interfere with one another.
  • Experimenters are responsible for their slice and will be held accountable for any adverse behaviors by experiments in their slices.