Title
Large-scale virtualization in the Emulab network testbed
Abstract
Network emulation is valuable largely because of its ability to study applications running on real hosts and "somewhat real" networks. However, conservatively allocating a physical host or network link for each corresponding virtual entity is costly and limits scale. We present a system that can faithfully emulate, on low-end PCs, virtual topologies over an order of magnitude larger than the physical hardware, when running typical classes of distributed applications that have modest resource requirements. This version of Emulab virtualizes hosts, routers, and networks, while retaining near-total application transparency, good performance fidelity, responsiveness suitable for interactive use, high system throughput, and efficient use of resources. Our key design techniques are to use the minimum degree of virtualization that provides transparency to applications, to exploit the hierarchy found in real computer networks, to perform optimistic automated resource allocation, and to use feed-back to adaptively allocate resources. The entire system is highly automated, making it easy to use even when scaling to more than a thousand virtual nodes. This paper identifies the many problems posed in building a practical system, and describes the system's motivation, design, and preliminary evaluation.
Year
Venue
Keywords
2008
USENIX Annual Technical Conference
interactive use,real computer network,corresponding virtual entity,thousand virtual node,emulab network,real host,high system throughput,efficient use,entire system,virtual topology,practical system,large-scale virtualization,computer network,distributed application
Field
DocType
Citations 
Virtualization,Transparency (graphic),Fidelity,Computer science,Exploit,Real-time computing,Network topology,Resource allocation,Throughput,Network emulation,Distributed computing
Conference
87
PageRank 
References 
Authors
8.93
15
8
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Mike Hibler141462.01
Robert Ricci213313.81
Leigh Stoller346249.03
Jonathon Duerig416416.99
Shashi Guruprasad514116.31
tim stack614813.76
Kirk Webb724721.07
Jay Lepreau81279159.62