[Planetlab-devel] PLC system discussion (in the hall)

[Marc E. Fiuczynski]

Just to be clear, I am not trying to elevate a PCU to a GENI-style  
component.  However, as part of the implementation details, there is  
a fair amount of inventory tracking etc. that is needed to build a  
functioning system.  PCUs are slightly more complex than just "on/ 
off".  They have their own hostname & ip address (need to be named),  
password (authentication / security), different methods of  
interacting with them, generally need to be managed/monitored by  
something to ensure that they are operational, AND may either manage  
power to one or more of the "real" components (involves naming the  
components -- i.e., their relationship with each other) .  There is  
sufficient overlap and intermixing at this level with a "component"  
in terms of inventory tracking that it seems easiest / best to build  
a single solution for this.

In my opinion, there is something architecturally clean if the whole  
system can be defined uniformly vs. having some wart glued to its  
side.  Being able to do so uniformly will hopefully help us at some  
point in the future make the claim that we could move *everything* to  
the next/new generation of the Internet (in terms of naming,  
management, monitoring, etc.).   Otherwise people will claim that one  
could not bring up a new PlanetLab/GENI system without relying on  
DNS, IPv4, etc.  We are now where close to this, but we wont progress  
to this by sweeping the implementation details under the rug.

Marc


On May 16, 2008, at 4:00 PM, Larry Peterson wrote:
> I'm, sorry. I agree not all nodes will support all capabilities...  
> some will
> be slicable and others not. Some programmable and others not. But a
> PCU seems like a different beast entirely. Like keeping a separate DB
> entry for the USB key. I would never ask a CM (or CM proxy) to do any
> architecturally-visible thing to a PCU. So the litmus test for me  
> is if
> there is every going to be a CM for the device.
>
> I realize we're talking abstractly here, and there is the matter of  
> tracking
> PCU information. Why isn't this a "field" associated with the node?
>
> Larry