This item has been out for discussion for a few weeks. Please
indicate your preference for accepting VCL to the Incubator. Proposal
is included below for posterity. We're looking for a few more
mentors. If there is discussion please create a parallel [DISCUSS]
thread.
[ ] +1 Accept VCL into Incubator
[ ] 0 No preference
[ ] -1 Do not accept VCL (please state rationale)
VCL Proposal
A proposal to the Apache Software Foundation Incubator PMC by
Matt Hogstrom*, Aaron Peeler#, Mladen Vouk#
*IBM, #North Carolina State University
September 6, 2008
1. Abstract
VCL is a management framework for building, dispensing and managing
virtual machine images across a set of bare metal machines or systems
with an installed virtual machine hypervisor.
2. Proposal
This proposal seeks to create a top-level Apache Software Foundation
project to continue the development and advancement of the Virtual
Computing Lab open-source framework. This project is primarily
concerned with providing a framework for hosting virtual server
instances. These instances can contain a variety of application types.
This implementation is in use at North Carolina State University to
facilitate efficient use of their computing infrastructure using
virtualization technologies. It has broad backing from the existing
contributors to the North Carolina State University Virtual Computing
Lab as well as interest from a variety of outside organizations.
The current participants are interested in expanding the usage of this
platform to include multiple target hypervisors as well as enhance
tooling for creating and managing virtual machine images. A partial
list of additional enhancements includes image management for storing
and archiving large number of images.
We thank you for your consideration.
Key Features & Goals
•
Scheduling server resources in a virtualized environment to improve
hardware and software efficiency.
•
Expand supported hypervisors to include additional machine
architectures.
•
Security support for multiple roles in managing and gaining access to
Cloud resources.
•
Tools to create images to be hosted in the virtual infrastructure.
•
To construct a REST driven framework for managing virtual computing
resources.
3. Rationale
The current implementation of the Virtual Computing Lab provides
benefits for NC State University in terms of efficiently managing
hardware and software resources. It also improves the simplicity to
distribute images to a wide variety of users in a simplified way thus
increasing human productivity in the process. Although originally
focused on academic usage the infrastructure to manage the virtual
assets have broader applicability for general data processing needs.
To explore these additional areas NC State wants to bring this project
to a more general population of developers and users to expand the
usefulness of the codebase.
In addition, this technology would benefit many organizations that are
looking to manage a set of physical assets through the application of
virtual server and image management.
4. Need for a Community Effort
The VCL project at NC State has been very successful at serving the
needs of the academic community and their unique needs for image
creation, dispensing, usage and scheduling. To enhance the system for
broader applicability for hosting other workload types and
incorporating a diverse set of ideas and driving towards a more
generalized approach there is a need for developers from commercial,
academic and other users to be involved in evolving the code base.
5. Known Risks
Commitment to future development. NC State has been actively working
this code base with other universities since 2004. Enhancements are
needed as the world of cloud computing evolves. The initial commiters
listed are actively working on the code base and have a list of
desired enhancements included later in this proposal.
Experience with open source. Some of the developers have had limited
involvement in open source projects. They understand that
collaboration at Apache is community oriented. Working with mentors
and others at Apache to build a solid community around the code base
is an understood goal of the project.
Diversity of developer community. The initial code base was developed
at NC State over a few years with involvement with some local
universities. There has also been interest and some participation from
corporate interests. The initial community is made up of individuals
from 5 universities and one corporation.
Relationship to other Apache projects. There are no Apache projects
such as VCL is currently involved with although the project uses
releases from projects such as HTTP. Recent proposals such as Tashi
have similar goals but not necessarily complete overlap.
7. Source
The seed code from NC State has been in production since 2004 and has
undergone several changes over that time. It currently serves the
needs of the Virtual Computing Lab in use at NC State as well as other
universities in various stages of exploitation.
Access to existing source code can be found here for those interested
in looking at current project status:
https://vcl.ncsu.edu/db87e7a15d2d21f402b1d/VCL-1.9.1.tar.gz
8. Required Resources
(a) Proposed Mailing lists:
•
vcl-private (with moderated subscriptions)
•
vcl-dev
•
vcl-commits
•
vcl-user
(b) Subversion directory
•
http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/vcl
(c) Issue tracking:
•
VCL will use JIRA for bug tracking.
9. Initial Committers
The following list of individuals who would
•
Aaron Peeler (NCSU)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
•
Josh Thompson (NCSU)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
•
Andy Kurth (NCSU)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
•
Mladen Vouk (NCSU)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
•
John Bass (NCSU)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
•
Eric Sills (NCSU)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
•
Matt Valenzisi (NCSU)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
•
Steve Thorpe (MCNC)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
•
Jeff Chase (Duke)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
•
Paul Jones (UNC-CH)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
•
Don Sizemore (UNC-CH)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
•
Ken Chestnutt (UNC-CH)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
•
Brian Bouterse (IBM)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
•
Matt Hogstrom (IBM)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
•
John Savage (GMU)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
•
Wuchun Feng (VA Tech)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
•
Mark Gardner (VA Tech)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
10. Sponsors
•
Champion: Matt Hogstrom (
[EMAIL PROTECTED])
•
Nominated mentors:
•
Alan Cabrera (
[EMAIL PROTECTED])
•
Sponsoring entity: Apache Incubator PMC
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