[wiki:GeniDesktop/Manual/intro Back to Introduction] = Global Node = Global Node is a term used quite frequently when using the GENIDesktop Framework. It simply is an GENI Virtual Machine node * Xen VM in case of Instageni or Protogeni * xoSmall VM in case of Exogeni using a public IP as its control interface and loaded with a custom OS that has an Apache Webserver, MYSQL Server, MRTG and other daemons used by the GENIDesktop. This VM node does not have any links to the nodes in your slice. It communicates to all the nodes in your slice over the control plane. The GENIDesktop uses this Global Node as a proxy to talk to the nodes in your slice and perform all computations ,visualizations and data collections that are viewed via the GENIDesktop web interface. In the current implementation, we use the Ubuntu 14.04 64 bit as the OS in both Exogeni and Instageni. In addition to this the global node rspec definition also contains a small bit of an rspec extension that differentiates it from other nodes in your slice. As per the GENIDesktop design we include one Global Node per aggregate in your slice. This helps the data collection to happen locally within each aggregate. Hence your slice could end up with multiple Global Nodes depending on the number of aggregates used in your slice.