Information about the CernVM GSoC project 2014

Description

CernVM is a virtual appliance that can be used by the four LHC experiments in order to run simulation and data processing applications in the Cloud. Unlike standard virtual machine images, CernVM provides a uniform configuration interface across the most relevant cloud infrastructures (Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine, CERN OpenStack, Nimbus ScienceCloud, ...). This is achieved by so called "contextualization plugins", light-weight agents inside the virtual machine that detect the infrastructure at hand and dynamically adapt the image. With the transition of most cloud infrastructures from an early exploitation phase to a production service, the contextualization plugins also need to be evolved, streamlined, and optimized.

For this project, the student develops or evolves a common framework for contextualization plugins. The student is supposed to measures and optimizes the virtual machine boot time delay due to these plugins. The student will also get in touch with the computing groups of LHC experiments to ensure CernVM fits within their distributed computing environment.

Further information

• CernVM E-Planet 2013 lectures
• CernVM Contextualization pages
• Cloud-Init official documentation, Ubuntu Cloud-Init pages

-- GerardoGanis - 03 Mar 2014