Using Para-Virtualization as the Basis for a Federated PlanetLab Architecture

The federation of islands of large scale distributed systems is a difficult problem, in part because of the variety of systems involved. We categorize solutions into either the systems integration or the virtualization approach. Using the virtualization approach, we enable a federated architecture for the PlanetLab Internet testbed. The current implementation of PlanetLab has a central management authority responsible for the maintenance of the system's nodes and creation of virtual machines for users. We propose two additional entities, which separate aspects of a node and site's management, allowing viable federation, called the Site Manager and Federation Authority. Building on the existing virtualization used by PlanetLab, the realisation of our proposal makes use of Xen, a para-virtualization system for x86 hardware. We present the uses of Xen domains, or virtual machines, as hosts for both PlanetLab nodes and slices. This additional layer of virtualization is the basis of our federation architecture.