Hey Alexander,
On 13.09.2017 10:36, Alexander Dubinin wrote:
Hello Simon, all,
1. Is this academic project, or it have specific goals and areas
of application? Would be good to have some practical use-cases
and well formulated list of problems (we all feel these by guts,
but...), it aiming to solve. IMHO that will help to prioritize
functionality and get usable result faster :)
It is kind of both, however we aim a strong focus on real world
problems: IoT, Mobile Edge Computing (MEC), Automotive, Virtual
Network Functions (VNFs), and others.
We have played with many Unikernels (ClickOS, Mirage, Rump, OSv, and
others) and tried to apply them in the several areas. While doing
this, we noticed that each area benefits differently from the
properties that Unikernels give - which is great (e.g., instant boot
times for MEC, high performance for NFV, resource efficiency for
IoT). However, building and maintaining new Unikernels (as we did
with ClickOS, MiniCache, and Minipython) is currently painful.
Because of different focuses on properties and ported/implemented
applications, most Unikernel today are bound to their own OS layers
(e.g., ClickOS uses a different Mini-OS than Mirage). Each
application requires a different subset of OS layers but also
enables different optimizations of them.
In order to solve this, we came up with the Unicore proposal. But I
agree with your suggestion at this point: It helps for the project
start to focus on some initial areas. For now, I hope this is driven
by the first contributors, and I have personally IoT in mind. Since
the project goal is so ambitious, we should keep the long-term goal
in mind from the beginning.
Yes, that's exactly what I meant :)
And IMHO it would be good to not have very abstract goals - and you
named first real one - IoT.
Do you have real-life use-case with real-life hardware to implement
within this IoT?
For example, popular IoT devkit, people can use and join this efforts?
And real, useful application for it?
This is a good question. No, we haven't settled on a particular IoT
devkit yet. Do you have something in mind?
For now, we did some research prototypes for IoT by using a Cubieboard
and Unikernels that process some sensor data.
My interest here is mostly disaggregation and security - to have
minimal, but still functional service domains, built strictly for
specific functionality.
So far we (team, I working with) are using BuildRoot to create
Dom0/stubdoms/driverdoms/etc. based on Linux (yet).
In our case (at least, right now) guest systems are heavy
VMs(Windows/Linux/*BSD/QNX) with GPU passthrough (And not only GPU, but
other controllers, test boards, etc.).
Hardware domains most likely to be based on the OS-es, which have proven
and stable hardware support base (Linux, *BSD), but there are still need
in service domains - like TUI(Text UI) domain, where users are
interacting with host, stub-domain, dom0, which starting hardware
domains, etc.
So, that could be one more goal - minimalistic service domains for
x86/64 platform.
Yes, sure.
Another goal would be virtualization in Automated Control Systems area -
but it's too early (for me, at least) to talk about it yet.
Does anybody have other _specific_ targets for Unicore in mind?
I am also interested in answers.
2. Does any security subsystem planned? XEN have XSM/FLASK, but
IMHO is should be supplemented by some security layer in
control/stub domains as well. So far only known implementation
is OpenXT, but it is.... very specific. Probably some
generalized security layer needed in Unicore to supplement
FLASK/XSM... Correct me please, if I misunderstanding :)
I agree that many projects (especially embedded, stubdomains, driver
domains, NFV) have a vested interest in security and isolation. In
my view, XSM/FLASK further restricts what a VM can do and sounds
kind of orthogonal to the functionality of a VM (am I right?). The
fact that Unikernels should only pick components that are actually
required to do the job reduces the attack surface compared to
general purpose OSes.
Do you see further value with FLASK/XSM which requires early
implementation and design decisions for Unicore? As far as I can
tell something like Flask is implemented mostly in the hypervisor
and toolstack, not in the guests themselves, is this right?
Yes, if Unicore is not supposed to be used as Dom0, and if we are
considering Unicore domains only as a guests, running in the single
security context, that's fine :)
But if, eventually, it will be used as a control domain in multi-tenant
system, which should manage XSM/FLASK and fill the gap between real
users(and their data) and VMs, restricted by FLASK - it's something to
think about. Maybe just not now :) Or it's not one of Unicore goals even :)
I got it. Yes, I think this could be considered as a goal for an
extension library to the Xen platform libraries. It could be seen as
"control domain" extension. Why not? ;-)
Just dreaming to have absolutely minimal service domains, where every
byte is known and needed :)
I think there are use cases for this. I think this starts with
automotive, but it could be also important for projects, like OpenXT.
Regards,
Alexander
Thanks,
Simon
Regards,
Alexander
On Fri, Sep 8, 2017 at 3:31 PM, Felipe Huici
<felipe.hu...@neclab.eu <mailto:felipe.hu...@neclab.eu>
<mailto:felipe.hu...@neclab.eu <mailto:felipe.hu...@neclab.eu>>>
wrote:
Hi Wei, Stefano,
Thank you so much for agreeing to be sponsors! I’ll update
the document.
— Felipe
============================================================
Dr. Felipe Huici
Chief Researcher, Networked Systems and Da
<https://maps.google.com/?q=orked+Systems+and+Da&entry=gmail&source=g>ta
Analytics Group
NEC Laboratories Europe, Network Research Division
Kurfuerstenanlage 36, D-69115 Heidelberg
Tel. +49
(0)6221 4342-241
Fax: +49
(0)6221 4342-155
e-mail:
felipe.hu...@neclab.eu <mailto:felipe.hu...@neclab.eu>
<mailto:felipe.hu...@neclab.eu <mailto:felipe.hu...@neclab.eu>>
============================================================
NEC Europe Limited Registered Office: NEC House, 1
Victoria Road, London W3 6BL Registered in England 2832014
On 9/8/17, 1:00 PM, "Lars Kurth" <lars.ku...@citrix.com
<mailto:lars.ku...@citrix.com>
<mailto:lars.ku...@citrix.com
<mailto:lars.ku...@citrix.com>>> wrote:
>@Wei, @Stefano,
>
>On 07/09/2017, 22:16, "Stefano Stabellini"
<sstabell...@kernel.org <mailto:sstabell...@kernel.org>
<mailto:sstabell...@kernel.org
<mailto:sstabell...@kernel.org>>> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I would be glad to sponsor this proposal. I think it
will be
of great
> benefit to the ecosystem. Let me know if I need to do
anything
>specific.
>
>Basically, all which is needed is an agreement. Which we
have from you
>both. Felipe, can then add your names to the proposal.
>
>Looking out for the evolving project and helping (e.g.
through
advice) is
>not strictly necessary,
<https://maps.google.com/?q=strictly+necessary,&entry=gmail&source=g>but
always welcome.
>
>Lars
>
--
Regards,
Alexander Dubinin
--
============================================================
Simon Kuenzer
シモン クゥンツァー
Research Scientist,
Networked Systems and Data Analytics Group
NEC Laboratories Europe, Network Research Division
Kurfuerstenanlage 36, D-69115 Heidelberg
Tel. +49 (0)6221 4342-264
Fax: +49 (0)6221 4342-5264
e-mail: simon.kuen...@neclab.eu <mailto:simon.kuen...@neclab.eu>
============================================================
NEC Europe Ltd | Registered Office: Athene, Odyssey
Business Park, West End Road, London, HA4 6QE, GB
Registered in England 2832014
--
Regards,
Alexander Dubinin
Thanks,
Simon
--
============================================================
Simon Kuenzer
シモン クゥンツァー
Research Scientist,
Networked Systems and Data Analytics Group
NEC Laboratories Europe, Network Research Division
Kurfuerstenanlage 36, D-69115 Heidelberg
Tel. +49 (0)6221 4342-264
Fax: +49 (0)6221 4342-5264
e-mail: simon.kuen...@neclab.eu
============================================================
NEC Europe Ltd | Registered Office: Athene, Odyssey
Business Park, West End Road, London, HA4 6QE, GB
Registered in England 2832014
_______________________________________________
Xen-devel mailing list
Xen-devel@lists.xen.org
https://lists.xen.org/xen-devel
