wiki:ProtoGENI-1Q09-status

Version 3 (modified by Aaron Falk, 15 years ago) (diff)

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ProtoGENI Project Status Report

Period: 1Q 2009

I. Major accomplishments

A. Milestones achieved

Year 1(c): Basic clearinghouse and aggregate manager up and running

We have released our clearinghouse software under the GENI Public License. The clearinghouse has two main roles:

  • To act as a central trust anchor for federates
  • To provide a set of registries for component managers, slice authorities, slices, and users, so that these entities can find one another

More details of the capabilities, including complete API documentation, can be found here: http://www.protogeni.net/trac/protogeni/wiki/ClearingHouseDesc.
The installation documentation here can be found here: http://www.protogeni.net/trac/protogeni/wiki/InstallingAClearingHouse

An aggregate manager based on the Emulab software is now running at 4 sites: Utah, Kentucky, Wisconsin, and CMU. This AM is capable of:

  • Provisioning "raw" PCs and PlanetLab slivers
  • Creating VLANs within a single aggregate
  • Creating IP-in-IP tunnels between different aggregates
  • Support for our RSpec format for resource advertisement and sliver descriptions (ticket requests)
  • Federation through a shared clearinghouse

This aggregate manager is part of the Emulab codebase, and is implemented as a new API to Emulab resource manipulation. It is available under the AGPLv3 directly from Emulab CVS.

More details on the capabilities of this AM can be found at: http://www.protogeni.net/trac/protogeni/wiki/AggregateManager
API documentation is here: http://www.protogeni.net/trac/protogeni/wiki/ComponentManagerAPI
Instructions for enabling the AM APIs on an Emulab installation are here: https://www.protogeni.net/trac/protogeni/wiki/ProtoGENIInstall

Year 1(g): Gave demos of progress at GEC #3 and GEC #4 We demonstrated the abilities of the clearinghouse and aggregate manager listed above at GEC #3 and GEC #4, plus:

  • A proof-of-concept GUI for describing GENI slices, including topology specification
  • A working federation of 4 sites
  • Emergency shutdown of slices
  • Delegation of credentials

Poster from the GEC3, which included material from the demo: http://www.protogeni.net/trac/protogeni/wiki/GEC3Poster
Poster used in the presentation of the GEC4 demo: http://www.protogeni.net/trac/protogeni/wiki/GEC4Poster

We also made significant progress on "control plane integration of cluster partners" milestone, more details can be found below.

B. Deliverables made

Release of clearinghouse software under the GENI Public License Documentation here: http://www.protogeni.net/trac/protogeni/wiki/InstallingAClearingHouse

Significant progress on our RSpec prototype was released publicly at: http://www.protogeni.net/trac/protogeni/wiki/RSpec

Improvements include:

  • Changes to support the needs of the HomeNet project
  • Support for annotations mapping requested links to specific physical paths
  • Re-working of the identifiers used to identify and bind resources

Ongoing (listed in last report, still going strong):

Documentation of design decisions and plans up at http://www.protogeni.net/
Early credential and ticket formats (still in progress) released at: http://www.protogeni.net/trac/protogeni/wiki/Authentication

II. Description of work performed during last quarter

A. Activities and findings

As before, much of the activity billable this quarter to this contract has been integration and collaboration (see below).

The most significant progress we have made this quarter is the running of a federation, which joins together four of the projects in our cluster: Utah, Kentucky, Wisconsin, and CMU. This is a full control-plane federation, in which all members act as independent Slice Authorities and Component Managers, establishing trust through a shared Clearinghouse (run at Utah). The APIs and data structures used to communicate among the federates, and for users to access the federates, are our versions of the GENI APIs. All federates at this time are running versions of the Emulab software.

Users may request slices that include network topologies - links within a federate are realized as VLANs, and links between federates are currently realized as IP-in-IP tunnels. When the backbone is built out, it will be a member of this federation, and will enable end-to-end VLAN connectivity between a few of the federates (pending the assistance of regional and campus networks).

Documentation for joining the federation is here: http://www.protogeni.net/trac/protogeni/wiki/BecomingAProtoGENISite

API documentation is here:

http://www.protogeni.net/trac/protogeni/wiki/ClearingHouseDesc
http://www.protogeni.net/trac/protogeni/wiki/SliceAuthorityAPI
http://www.protogeni.net/trac/protogeni/wiki/ComponentManagerAPI

A set of scripts to use these APIs are described here: http://www.protogeni.net/trac/protogeni/wiki/TestScripts

Under other funding, we have made progress on a number of other important tasks, including:

Support for delegation of credentials, which includes a further fleshing out of our security model. Described at: http://www.protogeni.net/trac/protogeni/wiki/DelegationExample
Progress on a slice embedding service, by adding support for RSpec to Emulab's "assign" (resource mapper)
Support for simple emergency shutdown of slices
Very early support for OpenVZ-based slicing inside of the Emulab testbed

We were heavily involved in GEC4, giving three talks, a demo, a poster, and running 6 hours of cluster meeting time. We have also been involved in the planning for GEC6, to be held in Salt Lake City.

B. Project participants

University of Utah

Subcontracts for HP and Internet2 still under negotiation, due to uncertainties about which Internet2 sites to use in first year - proceeding now that those have been decided

C. Publications (individual and organizational)

D. Outreach activities

As part of Solicitation 2, we had discussions with a large number of institutions that are not already part of GENI, encouraging more participation. This included a number of international collaborators.

We addressed a meeting of the QUILT, a group of regional networks (primarily academic), about how they can get involved in GENI.

E. Collaborations

We have continued to organize bi-weekly Cluster C conference calls, which have helped our cluster members to make progress together. In addition to the members assigned to our cluster, the Security Architecture project has been a frequent participant, and some calls have featured members of th GPO and other invited projects.

The following projects have integrated with our clearinghouse by joining our federation (described above):

CMU Testbeds
Instrumentation Tools
Measurement System

The following project has added support for its substrate to the Emulab software, bringing it very close to clearinghouse integration:

Programmable Edge node

We have begun working out RSpec compatibility with the following project:

DTunnels/BGP Mux

We have also interacted with a number of other GPO-funded projects outside of our cluster, including:

SPP Overlay Nodes: Cooperating to share Internet2 donated wave, have been working out details of when, where, and how equipment will be placed at shared POPs

GMOC: Currently evaluating a proposal by the GMOC for using URNs to identify users and resources in GENI. Have also discussed the set of operational data we can collect

Security Architecture: In continuous contact to refine our security model

Million-Node GENI: Now available on Emulab testbed, and plan to soon add support for automatically giving ProtoGENI users "Seattle" accounts

Mid-Atlantic Network: Have had a discussion about the capabilities of DRAGON and how it could be useful to ProtoGENI in the medium (but probably not short) term

Great Plains Network: Have given them an account on Emulab so that they can see how our control framework is put together

We participated in a GPO-sponsored meeting held in Denver in February, primarily composed of Cluster B members, to work out issues relating to the role of the clearinghouse in interacting with aggregate managers.

We have continued to be heavily involved in the Control Framework and Services working groups, through in-person meetings, conference calls, and email discussions.

F. Other Contributions