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Please make sure to download VCL from an mirror server. The following link will automatically select one for you that should be close to you. After downloading it make sure you verify it with MD5 or SHA1 sums AND the GPG signature (sums and signature files should be downloaded directly from Apache, not from mirrors).

Download ASF VCL 2.1 (not available yet)
GPG Signature (not available yet)
MD5 Sum (not available yet)
SHA1 Sum (not available yet)
VCL KEYS file

Run the following command to verify the MD5 sum. You should get the same number that is in apache-VCL-2.1-incubating.tar.bz2.md5:
md5sum apache-VCL-2.1-incubating.tar.bz2

Similarly, Run the following command to verify the SHA1 sum. You should get the same number that is in apache-VCL-2.1-incubating.tar.bz2.sha1:
sha1sum apache-VCL-2.1-incubating.tar.bz2

To verify the GPG signature (you'll need to have GnuPG installed):

  1. download and import the VCL KEYS file:
    gpg --import KEYS
  2. download the GPG Signature to the same location as the release file
  3. from the directory containing both the release file and the GPG signature, run
    gpg --verify apache-VCL-2.1-incubating.tar.bz2.asc

Release Notes

I. Intro and Description

VCL, Virtual Computing Lab. The VCL can be many things, first and foremost it is an 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.

II. VCL Roadmap

VCL 2.1 (this release)

  • completed modularization of vcld
  • xCAT 2.1 support
  • Shibboleth authentication
  • VMWare management via VMWare toolkit
  • ESXi with thin provisioning on a NetApp

VCL 2.2

  • power management
  • support for xCAT 2.2
  • improve cluster reservations
  • improve block reservations

VCL 2.3

  • improve hypervisor support
    • dynamic provisioning of host servers
    • VMWare Free Server 2.0
    • possibly XEN or KVM

VCL 2.4

  • develop tools for managing both system and user storage

With each release, we'll be working toward making VCL easier to install. As part of our move to development at the Apache Software Foundation, it is an obvious goal to create a community of users and more developers around VCL. Bringing in more developers should become easier as VCL becomes easier to install.

III. Getting Involved in the ASF VCL Community

There are five ways to become involved in the ASF VCL community.

  • Submit bug reports and feature requests to our JIRA bug tracking system. See section IV below for more information on doing this.
  • Create documentation on our Confluence site. Create an account at http://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/VCL/Index and just start adding content. (Note to current community: We should create a page explaining the layout so new people will know where to add content better.)
  • Submit patches through the vcl-dev mailing list and via the JIRA bug tracking system. Once you have become familiar with VCL, you can begin assisting with the development of it by picking a JIRA issue to fix or by adding a feature needed at your site. Then, contribute a patch of your changes through the JIRA tracking system and send a message to the vcl-dev list explaining what you have done.
  • Become an official committer to the project. Once you have shown that you have a good grasp of the project by submitting patches, you can further join the development work by submitting a contributor license agreement (CLA) to ASF and having a committer account created to directly contribute code to the project.

IV. How to Submit Bugs and Feature Requests

If you find a bug, please submit a bug report to our JIRA bug tracking system athttp://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/VCL (you will need to set up an account there if you haven't already done so - it's free to anyone). Also, we would appreciate it if you mentioned that you filed a bug on the vcl-dev list to make sure we don't miss it.

If you would like to requrest a new feature, you can also submit that in the same way through JIRA (just select "New Feature" or "Improvement" as the Issue Type). Again, it would be helpful if you mentioned that you filed a feature
request on the vcl-dev list.

After you have created a JIRA issue, you have the option to vote on it to help us know how to prioritize issues. You can also "watch" the issue to see when activity related to it is submitted.

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