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.
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 as simple as a virtual machine running 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 interconnected physical (bare metal) compute nodes.
Also using the scheduling API it can be used to automate the provisioning of servers in a server farm or HPC cluster.
Disclaimer
Apache VCL is an effort undergoing incubation at The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), sponsored by the name of sponsor. Incubation is required of all newly accepted projects until a further review indicates that the infrastructure, communications, and decision making process have stabilized in a manner consistent with other successful ASF projects. While incubation status is not necessarily a reflection of the completeness or stability of the code, it does indicate that the project has yet to be fully endorsed by the ASF.
Interested in giving back? There are several ways to assist:
Mailing lists
Archives
Confluence |
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Subversion Repository |
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JIRA |
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Current version |
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Release Roadmap |
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User Documentation |
Documentation (work in progress: Diagrams, Install guide) |
Architecture Diagram |
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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Terminology: Bare-metal = a physical server (such as a blade server) as opposed to a virtual machine Node = a computer Resource = a compute node, an image, a management node, or a schedule Management Node = a process server or the machine where vcld is running; processes user requests assigned by the scheduler; does the provisioning
See the VCL Installation documentation for more information