XGE II

Overview

The XGE is an Open Source Virtual Machine (VM) manger. It can

• run coupled to an installed resource manager (Torque from Clusterresources.com),
• serve as a backend for a Web-Service enabled frontend like Virtual Workspaces or
• work as a standalone application.

The worker nodes of the XGE run an administrator controlled hypervisor in which user specific virtual machine hard disk images are started when a job is to be executed. The use of per user virtual worker nodes allows unprecedented administrative rights to be given to the user. Custom libraries and software can be installed autonomously without the cluster administrators assistance. The worker node configured by the cluster administrator controls the resource usage of the user images. Further information about the XGE and its interacting components can be found in the Design section and in the papers listed below.

Table of contents

• News

• Documentation
  • Install the XGE and Torque
  • Install and setup the placeholder VM images
  • Configure the XGE
  • Prepare BitTorrent deployment
  • Usage
  • Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

• Download
• Contact

License

All code: Copyright (c) 2007-11 Distributed Systems Group, University of Marburg, Germany.

The XGE is dual licensed. For non-commercial use all code is licensed under the GNU General Public License v2. If you want to use the XGE in a commercial setting, please contact us.

Papers

1. R. Schwarzkopf, Matthias Schmidt, C. Strack, B. Freisleben:  Checking Running and Dormant Virtual Machines for the Necessity of Security Updates in Cloud Environments. In: Proceedings of the 3rd IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science (IEEE CloudCom 2011), pp. to appear, IEEE Press, 2011
2. K. Haselhorst, Matthias Schmidt, R. Schwarzkopf, N. Fallenbeck, B. Freisleben:  Efficient Storage Synchronization for Live Migration in Cloud Infrastructures. In: Proceedings of the 19th Euromicro Conference on Parallel, Distributed and Network-based Processing (PDP), pp. 511-518. IEEE Press, 2011
3. Matthias Schmidt, N. Fallenbeck, M. Smith, B. Freisleben:  Efficient Distribution of Virtual Machines for Cloud Computing. In: Proceedings of the 18th Euromicro Conference on Parallel, Distributed and Network-based Processing (PDP 2010), pp. 567-574, IEEE Press, 2010
4. Matthias Schmidt, N. Fallenbeck, M. Smith, B. Freisleben:  Secure Service-Oriented Grid Computing with Public Virtual Worker Nodes. In: Proceedings of 35th Euromicro Conference on Internet technologies, quality of service and applications (ITQSA), pp. 555-562, IEEE Press, 2009
5. R. Schwarzkopf, Matthias Schmidt, N. Fallenbeck, B. Freisleben:  Multi-Layered Virtual Machines for Security Updates in Grid Environments. In: Proceedings of 35th Euromicro Conference on Internet technologies, quality of service and applications (ITQSA), pp. 563-570, IEEE Press, 2009
6. M. Smith, Matthias Schmidt, N. Fallenbeck, T. Dörnemann, C. Schridde, B. Freisleben: Security for On-demand Grid Computing. In: Journal of Future Generation Computer Systems, pp. 315-325, Elsevier, 2008
7. M. Smith, Matthias Schmidt, N. Fallenbeck, C. Schridde, B. Freisleben:  Optimising Security Configurations with Service Level Agreements In: Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Optimization: Techniques and Applications (ICOTA7), pp. 367-381, 2007
8. Matthias Schmidt, M. Smith, N. Fallenbeck, H.J. Picht, B. Freisleben:  Building a Demilitarized Zone with Data Encryption for Grid Environments. In: Proceedings of First International Conference on Networks for Grid Applications, pp. 8-16, 2007
9. N. Fallenbeck, H. Picht, M. Smith, B. Freisleben:  Xen and the Art of Cluster Scheduling. In: VTDC '06: Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Virtualization Technology in Distributed Computing in conjuncture with the ACM/IEEE conference on Supercomputing, pp. 4-11, IEEE Press, 2006

Acknowledgements

• XGE development team
• This project is partially sponsored by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under the D-Grid- and HPC-Initiative.