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Apache VCL

The Apache VCL incubator project.

VCL, Virtual Computing Lab. The VCL can be many things, foremost it is a open-source system used dynamically provision and broker remote access to a compute environment. These computers are typically housed in a data center, a physical blade server, a virtual machine or a standalone machine.

One of the primary goals of VCL is to deliver a dedicated compute environment to a user for a limited time through a web interface. This compute environment can range from something simple as a virtual machine running an productivity software to a machine room blade running high end software (i.e. a CAD, GIS,statistical package or an Enterprise level application) to a cluster of interconnect of interconnected physical (bare metal) compute nodes.

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  Project Resources

Conceptual Overview

Image Added

VCL Feature list

• Automated provisioning, on-demand or future based
• Brokers user sessions
• Block allocations - provisioning larger number of compute environments for a specific event
  • For the class room
  • A conference workshop
• Physical (bare-metal*) provisioning using xCAT
• Virtual machine provisioning on VMware ESXi, ESX Standard server, VMware Free Server
• Image creation - allow end-users to create custom environments.
• Image revision control, create multiple revisions of an image.
• Statistics of usage for environments
• Privilege control, through web interface grant  vary levels of control to end-users
  • Image checkout, image creation, manage users, manage resources*, manage resource schedules
• Set available/unavailable schedules for nodes
• Multiple Management Nodes*

Terminology:
Bare-metal = The physical server such as a blade server.Node = a computerResources = Can be a compute node, an image, a management node, a scheduleManagement Nodes =  a process server or the machine where vcld is running. Processes assigned user-requests, does the provisioning. Provides scalability in a large environment.