Abstract
In a virtualized environment, contextualization is the process of configuring a VM instance for the needs of various deployment use cases. Contextualization in CernVM can be done by passing a handwritten context to the user data field of cloud APIs, when running CernVM on the cloud, or by using CernVM web interface when running the VM locally. CernVM Online is a publicly accessible web interface that unifies these two procedures. A user is able to define, store and share CernVM contexts using CernVM Online and then apply them either in a cloud by using CernVM Cloud Gateway or on a local VM with the single-step pairing mechanism. CernVM Cloud Gateway is a distributed system that provides a single interface to use multiple and different clouds (by location or type, private or public). Cloud gateway has been so far integrated with OpenNebula, CloudStack and EC2 tools interfaces. A user, with access to a number of clouds, can run CernVM cloud agents that will communicate with these clouds using their interfaces, and then use one single interface to deploy and scale CernVM clusters. CernVM clusters are defined in CernVM Online and consist of a set of CernVM instances that are contextualized and can communicate with each other.
Highlights
At CernVM [1], contextualization is the process of applying a predefined set of parameters to a polymorphic virtual machine instance, converting it to a specialized processing unit
In the remaining of this paper we describe CernVM Online in section table 2, a web portal to define, store and share contexts, as well as easier ways to apply them in local virtual machines and virtual machines with console access
We presented the developments in CernVM contextualization processes and the introduction of CernVM Online web portal for managing and sharing contexts
Summary
At CernVM [1], contextualization is the process of applying a predefined set of parameters to a polymorphic virtual machine instance, converting it to a specialized processing unit. With the introduction of CernVM 3.x series [3] there will be a single image covering all the use cases This increases the flexibility inherited from CernVM 2.x since, with CernVM 3.x, contextualization can transform a newly booted virtual machine to either batch head /node or desktop. CernVM provides a user friendlier approach aiming to help inexperienced users This is the web appliance that comes with CernVM image and starts once the machine is booted. This service is currently hosted at http://cernvm-online.cern.ch. Note that this is a public service and does not target only CERN users
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