Apache VCL

The Apache VCL incubator project.

VCL, Virtual Computing Lab. The VCL can be many things, first and foremost it is a open-source system used to dynamically provision and broker remote access to a dedicated compute environment for an end-user. The provisioned computers are typically housed in a data center and may be physical blade servers, traditional rack mounted servers, or virtual machines. VCL can also broker access to standalone machines such as a lab computers on a university campus.

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Also using the scheduling API it can be used to automate the provisioning of servers in a server farm or HPC cluster.

User Documentation

• Overview for VCL Users (those doing daily management of a VCL installation)
  • Making a Reservation
  • Creating a New Image from a Base ImageImage Creation
  • Granting Access to a New Image
  • Example - Granting Two Sets of Users Access to Two Different Sets of Images
  • managegroups.py - Remotely managing user groups
  • The VCL XMLRPC API
• Documentation for VCL Administrators (those doing a VCL installation)
  • VCL ArchitectureVCL Architecture
  • Administrator's FAQ
  • VCL Installation (Current Release)
    • Database Configuration
    • Web Code Installation
    Management Node Installation
    • Adding support for partimage and partimage-ng to xCAT 2.x (unofficial)
    • Creating a Base Image
    • Troubleshooting
    • Terms

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Community

Interested in joining the community or giving back to open source? There are several ways to assist:

• Join the mailing lists below and discuss ideas.
• Contribute bug-fixes or get involved in development.
  • How to Become a committer
• Help with the documentation, both end-user and installation.
• Help improve the website.

Mailing lists

• User mailing list  vcl-user-subscribe@incubatorsubscribe@vcl.apache.org
• Development List vcl-dev-subscribe@incubatorsubscribe@vcl.apache.org

Archives

• Search: http://markmail.org/set/jlmr2rdvup4w2
• User (old): User  http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-vcl-user
• User (current): http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/vcl-user
• Development (old): Development  http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/incubator-vcl-dev
• Development (current): http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/vcl-dev

Project Resources

Conceptual Overview

The conceptual overview below shows that remote users connect to the VCL Scheduling Application (the web VCL portal) and request access to a desired application environment. The application environment consists of an operating system and a suite of applications. The computer types are machine room blade servers, vmware virtual machines, and standalone machines.

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VCL Feature

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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
  • For a conference workshop
• Physical (bare-metal) provisioning using xCAT
• Virtual machine provisioning on VMware ESXi, VMware 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 environment usage
• Privilege control - grant varying levels of control to end-users through web interface
  • Image checkout, image creation, manage users, manage resources, manage resource schedules
• Set available/unavailable schedules for nodes
• Multiple Management Nodes for scalability
• API support for making requests and provisioning resources

System Requirements

See the VCL Installation documentation for more information

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• Apache HTTP Server 1.3 or 2.x with SSL enabled (Apache License)
• PHP 5.0 or later (PHP License)
• PHP modules (PHP License):
  • php-gd
  • php-jsonphp-mcrypt
  • php-mysql
  • php-opensslphp-sysvsem
  • php-xml
  • php-xmlrpc
• libmcrypt and mcrypt libraries installed for php-mcrypt (GPL)
• Dojo Toolkit 0.4.0 and 1.16.0 2 (modified BSD license or the Academic Free License version 2.1)

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