The Virtualization Gate Project

Ercim News 80International audienceThe Vgate project introduces a new type of immersive environment that allows full-body immersion and interaction with virtual worlds. The project is a joint initiative between computer scientists from research teams in computer vision, parallel computing and computer graphics at the INRIA Grenoble Rhone-Alpes, and the 4D View Solutions company

Dynamic and Transparent Analysis of Commodity Production Systems

We propose a framework that provides a programming interface to perform complex dynamic system-level analyses of deployed production systems. By leveraging hardware support for virtualization available nowadays on all commodity machines, our framework is completely transparent to the system under analysis and it guarantees isolation of the analysis tools running on its top. Thus, the internals of the kernel of the running system needs not to be modified and the whole platform runs unaware of the framework. Moreover, errors in the analysis tools do not affect the running system and the framework. This is accomplished by installing a minimalistic virtual machine monitor and migrating the system, as it runs, into a virtual machine. In order to demonstrate the potentials of our framework we developed an interactive kernel debugger, nicknamed HyperDbg. HyperDbg can be used to debug any critical kernel component, and even to single step the execution of exception and interrupt handlers.Comment: 10 pages, To appear in the 25th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering, Antwerp, Belgium, 20-24 September 201

Methodologies for implementing technology projects. A Case Study on application and hardware virtualization

En este artículo investigativo se realiza una revisión de las diferentes metodologías utilizadas para la implementación y gestión de proyectos de tecnología, seleccionando las 3 más utilizadas de acuerdo a la información encontrada: ITIL, PMI y Stage-Gate. Partiendo de la definición de fases y etapas establecidas en cada una de las metodologías seleccionadas, se identifican las principales diferencias entre cada una de ellas y a partir de este análisis se selecciona la (s) metodología (s) más apropiada para la implementación de proyectos de virtualización tanto de Hardware como de Software, teniendo en cuenta que este tipo de proyectos al igual que los tecnológicos no deberían gestionarse como un proyecto tradicional. Utilizando una investigación exploratoria, cuantitativa, se encuentra que una combinación entre las metodologías Stage-Gate e ITIL podría garantizar el éxito en la gestión e implementación en los proyectos de virtualización.This research paper reviews different methodologies used for management and implementation technology projects, selecting 3 most used according with the information found: ITIL, PMI and Stage-Gate. Based on phases and stages defined for each selected methodology, main differences between each of them are identified, selecting the methodology (s) most appropriate to implement Hardware and Software virtualization projects, considering this type of projects, as the technology projects, should not be managed as a traditional project. Using an exploratory and quantitative research, It is found that a combination of Stage-Gate and ITIL methodology could ensure the successful management and implementation on virtualization project

Can open-source projects (re-) shape the SDN/NFV-driven telecommunication market?

Telecom network operators face rapidly changing business needs. Due to their dependence on long product cycles they lack the ability to quickly respond to changing user demands. To spur innovation and stay competitive, network operators are investigating technological solutions with a proven track record in other application domains such as open source software projects. Open source software enables parties to learn, use, or contribute to technology from which they were previously excluded. OSS has reshaped many application areas including the landscape of operating systems and consumer software. The paradigmshift in telecommunication systems towards Software-Defined Networking introduces possibilities to benefit from open source projects. Implementing the control part of networks in software enables speedier adaption and innovation, and less dependencies on legacy protocols or algorithms hard-coded in the control part of network devices. The recently proposed concept of Network Function Virtualization pushes the softwarization of telecommunication functionalities even further down to the data plane. Within the NFV paradigm, functionality which was previously reserved for dedicated hardware implementations can now be implemented in software and deployed on generic Commercial Off-The Shelf (COTS) hardware. This paper provides an overview of existing open source initiatives for SDN/NFV-based network architectures, involving infrastructure to orchestration-related functionality. It situates them in a business process context and identifies the pros and cons for the market in general, as well as for individual actors

Enabling virtual radio functions on software defined radio for future wireless networks

Today's wired networks have become highly flexible, thanks to the fact that an increasing number of functionalities are realized by software rather than dedicated hardware. This trend is still in its early stages for wireless networks, but it has the potential to improve the network's flexibility and resource utilization regarding both the abundant computational resources and the scarce radio spectrum resources. In this work we provide an overview of the enabling technologies for network reconfiguration, such as Network Function Virtualization, Software Defined Networking, and Software Defined Radio. We review frequently used terminology such as softwarization, virtualization, and orchestration, and how these concepts apply to wireless networks. We introduce the concept of Virtual Radio Function, and illustrate how softwarized/virtualized radio functions can be placed and initialized at runtime, allowing radio access technologies and spectrum allocation schemes to be formed dynamically. Finally we focus on embedded Software-Defined Radio as an end device, and illustrate how to realize the placement, initialization and configuration of virtual radio functions on such kind of devices

Building Programmable Wireless Networks: An Architectural Survey

In recent times, there have been a lot of efforts for improving the ossified Internet architecture in a bid to sustain unstinted growth and innovation. A major reason for the perceived architectural ossification is the lack of ability to program the network as a system. This situation has resulted partly from historical decisions in the original Internet design which emphasized decentralized network operations through co-located data and control planes on each network device. The situation for wireless networks is no different resulting in a lot of complexity and a plethora of largely incompatible wireless technologies. The emergence of "programmable wireless networks", that allow greater flexibility, ease of management and configurability, is a step in the right direction to overcome the aforementioned shortcomings of the wireless networks. In this paper, we provide a broad overview of the architectures proposed in literature for building programmable wireless networks focusing primarily on three popular techniques, i.e., software defined networks, cognitive radio networks, and virtualized networks. This survey is a self-contained tutorial on these techniques and its applications. We also discuss the opportunities and challenges in building next-generation programmable wireless networks and identify open research issues and future research directions.Comment: 19 page