PlanetLab Federation Development Aaron Klingaman Princeton University

Aaron Klingaman Princeton University Overview Motivation For Federation Background and Refresher Our Current Approach –Federation Stages –Management Authorities –Slice Authorities Open Problems and Discussion Points

Aaron Klingaman Princeton University Motivation for Federation Need to maintain cohesion between new, separate PlanetLab instances Enhancing long term viability by giving organizations autonomy and control over their resources Enabling scalable management of PlanetLab by decentralization To overcome language barriers and time zone differences that can hinder management or slow conflict resolution

Aaron Klingaman Princeton University Background and Refresher Management Authority –Controls software running on node, secure boot up –Logs auditing information Slice Authority –Provides slice namespace management on nodes –Creates slices for users on nodes PlanetLab Central is both an MA and an SA

Aaron Klingaman Princeton University Federation Stages Overview 4 stages centered around breaking apart PlanetLab Central: –Stage 0/1 preliminary work to get future MA sites running –Stage 2 separates the MA out of the architecture –Stage 3 new SA Stage 2/3 can be developed simultaneously

Aaron Klingaman Princeton University Federation Stage 0 Overview New management sites get started while the federation work continues Primarily consists of: –Custom built node boot cd –No need for any management authority servers yet –Nodes will automatically switch over to Management Authority when up and running later stages Status: Completed

Aaron Klingaman Princeton University Federation Stage 1 Overview Continue where stage 0 left off Bring online a server to handle the roles of the PLC web and boot server  Faster node installations A local team to handle support requests and node installation for nodes in the Management Authority All database related operations proxied back to PlanetLab central servers Status: Development complete, currently in testing

Aaron Klingaman Princeton University Federation Stage 2 Overview Goal is to create a fully independent Management Authority: –Develop and deploy own node software –Local team handles node management issues as they see fit –Ability to choose own slice authority in future PlanetLab Consortium will initially remain slice authority Status: Currently planning.

Aaron Klingaman Princeton University Federation Stage 3 Overview Final stage Ability to create a new independent Slice Authority Majority of work to allow this will happen in Stage 2

Aaron Klingaman Princeton University Open Problems and Next Steps Need collaborators for various problems: –What will the MA / SA communication protocols be? –What specifications will be necessary to implement the federation stages? –Slice naming schemes and interfaces for SAs/NodeManager? Research areas: –To what extent is resource management part of this federation work, and how will it fit?

Aaron Klingaman Princeton University More Information On going document describing these stages in more detail is available at: Subscribe to arch mailing list for future discussion Working group session tomorrow