wiki:GENIResources

Version 17 (modified by Vic Thomas, 9 years ago) (diff)

--

GENI Aggregates

A GENI aggregate provides resources to GENI experimenters. There are different types of aggregates. Some aggregates such as GENI Racks provide compute and network resources available, some such as AL2S, GeniAggregate/I2ION ION and MAX provide wired network resources and others such as NYU WiMAX and Orbit provide wireless resources. For a list of all GENI aggregates, see list of aggregates.

Picking aggregates

You may want to take the following into consideration while picking aggregates for your experiment:

  • Aggregate type. The most widely deployed GENI resources are InstaGENI and ExoGENI racks that provide compute and networking resources. Look here for major differences between these two rack types.
  • Aggregate location. The geographical coordinates of aggregates can be found in their advertisement RSpecs.
  • Support for stitching. Aggregates that support GENI stitching are listed at GENI network stitching sites.
  • Virtual machine vs. raw-PC. Most racks provide virtual machines and raw-PCs. As far as possible you should use virtual machines as they are many more of them and your resource reservation is more likely to succeed.
  • Resource availability. Some aggregates are more heavily loaded than others. For current usage information on InstaGENI racks, see ExpGraphs.

Resource expiration

GENI slices and the resources allocated to your slice (called slivers) have expiration times associated with them. You can extend this expiration using experimenter tools such as Omni, the GENI Portal or the GENI Desktop. Note that:

  • Sliver expiration times cannot go beyond the slice expiration times. So be sure to extend the slice expiration time before you extend the sliver expiration time. Some tools such as the GENI Portal allow you to extend slice and sliver expiration at the same time.
  • Different aggregates have different initial expiration times and allow you to extend resources by different amounts of time. See the table at GENIResources for initial and max expiration times allowed by different aggregates.

Aggregate categories

GENI aggregates are categorized as follows. You can select aggregate by category in tools such as the GENI Portal.

  • GENI Production. Resources tested and operated using GENI processes and procedures, under the GENI Aggregate Provider Agreement. Maintenance outages are typically scheduled and announced on the experimenter-ops mailing list. GENI Production aggregates are listed in the GENI Production Resources page.
  • GENI Experimental. Resources used for early deployment of new features and may not have completed testing. Outages are likely to be more frequent and may not be scheduled or announced.
  • Other Federated. Resources made available by agreement with GENI partner organizations, including international partners. They are operated under their own policies and procedures.

GENI Resources for Experimenters

There are various aggregate types in the GENI environment, some make compute and network resources available, such as InstaGENI, ExoGENI, and OpenGENI; while others make network-only resources available, such a AL2S, ION and MAX. See the GENI Aggregates page for a list of all available GENI Aggregates. The Experimenter pages have more information about how to access resources. This page documents some simple Omni tool commands for checking slice and sliver status.

Slices

In GENI, aggregates that supply compute resources generally make available both virtual and bare metal nodes (check the GENI Aggregates page for details that vary for some aggregates). You may request any of these resources as part of a slice, which is a container for all your requested resources. Each slice has an expiration date associated with it. When the slice expires, all your resources are released. The slice expiration defines to the amount of time your resources are allocated to you. Note, that the slice expiration is an overall expiration, but does not necessarily reflect the duration of your reservation at each aggregate. If you want to know when your slice expires, you can use the omni command as follows:

$ omni print_slice_expiration my-slice-name
...
 Result Summary: Slice urn:publicid:IDN+ch.geni.net:ln-test+slice+my-slice-name expires on 2015-02-23 20:47:28 UTC 

From the above result, you can see that the slice named 'my-slice-name' expires on '2015-02-23 20:47:28 UTC'. You can expand the amount of time that you request resources by renewing the slice, as follows:

$ omni renewslice my-slice-name 2015-02-28

Slivers

Resources requested at an individual aggregate are part of a sliver. A sliver can contain both compute and network resources that are part of your slice. Note that the slice expiration is not the same as the sliver expiration, and that each aggregate has its own expiration limit, which may be significantly different than the slice expiration time.

To find the expiration date for a sliver, you can use omni or stitcher as follows:

$stitcher --useSliceAggregates sliverstatus slice-name -o
....
Slice slice-name at AM ucd-eg has overall SliverStatus: ready.
 Resources in slice slice-name at AM ucd-eg expire at 2015-03-02T17:48:44 UTC.         <<---- Expiration date for sliver
 Saved sliverstatus on slice-name at AM ucd-eg to file slice-name-sliverstatus-exogeni-net-ucdvmsite.json. 
Slice slice-name at AM al2s has overall SliverStatus: ready.
 Resources in slice slice-name at AM al2s expire at 2015-08-20T17:47:53 UTC.           <<---- Expiration date for sliver
 Saved sliverstatus on slice-name at AM al2s to file slice-name-sliverstatus-al2s-internet2-edu.json. 
Slice slice-name at AM illinois-ig has overall SliverStatus: ready.
 Resources in slice slice-name at AM illinois-ig expire at 2015-05-17T17:48:46 UTC.    <<---- Expiration date for sliver
 Saved sliverstatus on slice-name at AM illinois-ig to file slice-name-sliverstatus-instageni-illinois-edu.json. 
Returned status of slivers on 5 of 5 possible aggregates.

Expiration by Aggregate type

Slice default duration is 7 days, but can be expanded to a maximum of 185 days. This table captures the default and maximum duration available for resources by aggregate type:

Aggregate Resource Type Default Duration Max Duration
InstaGENI VM 6 days(1) 90 days
InstaGENI Raw PC 7 days(1) 90 days
ExoGENI VM 6 days 14 days
ExoGENI Bare Metal 7 days 14 days
ProtoGENI Utah VM 1 day 5 days
ProtoGENI Utah Raw PC 1 day 5 days
OpenGENI VM 7 day 185 days
AL2S network path 7 days 185 days
ION network path 6 days 180 days (2)
MAX 6 days 180 days

Note (1): Expiration may vary for InstaGENI development racks, check your sliver to determine your expiration date.
Note (2): ION network will be decommissioned on March 27, 2015.