CAREER: Towards Virtual Distributed Environments in a Shared Distributed Infrastructure

尽管分布式共享基础设施（如PlanetLab和网格）的快速增长，但当前的实践与其全部潜力之间存在差距。特别是，许多用户希望获得他们的“自己的空间”，在共享基础设施的全部权限运行任意分布式应用程序。本研究引入了“虚拟分布式环境”（VDE）的概念，作为一种新的分布式基础设施的共享范例。基于虚拟化技术，VDE是自治的、相互隔离的实体，为个人用户提供特权的、定制的和受限的分布式环境。为了实现这一愿景，正在解决以下新的研究挑战：（1）分布式环境虚拟化和物流，（2）虚拟分布式环境的引导自适应，以及（3）虚拟分布式环境的可信监控和日志记录。这些挑战的解决方案进行了评估，在一些现实世界的应用场景，包括计算机系统仿真教育，电子科学服务的纳米技术研究界，和虚拟游乐场的互联网蠕虫的观察，调查和防御。特别是，这项工作的研究和教育活动密切相关。利用研究成果，正在开发一个教育平台，用于分布式和网络系统仿真。它为学生提供了动手系统的经验，否则将需要昂贵的专用设备。这项研究将为应用程序/服务部署和分布式系统实验打开新的机会之门。VDE的实现将通过容纳广泛的科学和工程活动，包括教育和研究门户网站，虚拟协作站和网络防御试验场，鼓励公众使用新兴的网络基础设施。

Despite the rapid growth of distributed shared infrastructures such as PlanetLab and the Grid, a gap exists between the current practice and their full potential. Especially, many users wish to obtain their "own space" with full privilege in a shared infrastructure to run arbitrary distributed applications. This research introduces the concept of "virtual distributed environments" (VDEs) as a new sharing paradigm for distributed infrastructures. Based on virtualization technologies, VDEs are autonomic, mutually isolated entities, providing individual users with privileged, customized, and confined distributed environments. To realize this vision, the following new research challenges are being addressed: (1) distributed environment virtualization and logistics, (2) shepherded self-adaptation of virtual distributed environments, and (3) trusted monitoring and logging of virtual distributed environments. Solutions to these challenges are evaluated in a number of real-world application scenarios, including computer system emulation for education, e-Science service for the nanotechnology research community, and virtual playgrounds for Internet worm observation, investigation, and defense. In particular, the research and education activities of this work are closely related. Leveraging the research results, an education platform is being developed for distributed and network systems emulation. It provides students with hands-on system experience that would otherwise require expensive, dedicated equipment. This research will open the door to new opportunities for application/service deployment and distributed system experimentation. The realization of VDE will encourage public use of the emerging cyberinfrastructure by accommodating a wide range of science and engineering activities including education and research portals, virtual collaboratories, and cyber-defense testing grounds.