wiki:GENIConcepts

Version 21 (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.

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.

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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:

  • 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.
  • 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 unit of access control. The experimenter that creates a slice can determine which project members have access to the slice i.e. are members of the slice. The project lead is automatically a member of all slices created in a project.

The following figure shows two slices created by the research assistant in Project Alpha. She has added to Slice 1 three compute resources connected by three network links. She has also added the post-doc associated with her project as a member of her slice. Her professor was automatically added to her slice as he is the project lead. Slice 2 has two compute resources connected by a link. She has not added the post-doc as a member of this slice and so he cannot perform any actions on this slice or even view the resources in this slice. Only the research assistant or her professor can add the post-doc to this slice. An experiment in Slice 1 can only use resources in Slice 1.

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The following roles are defined for slice members:

  • Lead. The slice Lead can add members to and remove members from a slice; add resources to or delete resources from a slice; change roles of other members of the slice and delete the slice. The experimenter that created the slice is the slice lead. In the above example, this would be the research assistant.
  • Admin. A slice Admin has all the privileges of a slice Lead. The Project Leader is automatically added to a slice as an Admin. The slice Lead and any slice Admin can promote other slice members to Admin. In the above example, the professor is an Admin on both slices.
  • Member. A slice Member can add resources to a slice or delete them from a slice. A Member can run experiments using these resources. A Member cannot make changes to slice membership. In the above example, the post-doc is a Member of Slice 1.
  • Auditor. An Auditor can list resources in a slice but cannot make any changes to the resources held by a slice or make changes to slice membership.

The GENI Portal

A web-based tool for experimenters to create accounts, projects and slices and to manage project and slice memberships. The Portal also includes tools to discover and add resources to slices.

Aggregates and Resources

A GENI aggregate provides resources to GENI experimenters. For example, a GENI Rack at Clemson University is an aggregate; GENI experimenters my request resources from this aggregate and add them to their slice. Different aggregates provide different kinds of resources. Some aggregates provide compute resources: Virtual Machines or "bare machines" or both. Some aggregates provide networking resources that experimenters can use to connect compute resources from multiple aggregates. The figure below shows a GENI slice with resources from multiple aggregates.

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Experimenters request resources from aggregates using a standard API called the GENI Aggregate Manager API or GENI AM API. The figure below