[Planetlab-users] node availability benchmarks

[Steve Muir]

On Fri, 18 Jun 2004, Rob Knauerhase wrote:
>
> >> "usable": to me should be a number of machines I should have no
> >> problems with.  If you keep a list of "usable" machines and I find one
> >> to be unusable, I should be able to file a trouble ticket with high
>
> This is key, IMHO.  I would break it into two parts, though; usable to
> an existing application and usable to a new one.

[snip]

> The latter, though, is something we don't have, and something that I
> as a user would find REALLY helpful.  If I want to make a new slice,
> or add a node to my current slice, I'd love to have a list of
> candidate nodes that I can reasonably expect to instantiate my service
> on.  This especially as opposed to what we have now, which is
> "oversubscribe and hope you get enough for what you really wanted",
> which is both inelegant and not good for the environment overall.
> This facet of "usable" would include (by definition) reachability by
> SSH, ability to instantiate a new sliver, and perhaps even ability to
> install a painfully-simple "phone home" application.  Implicit in that
> are some (many?) of Mic's tests, I suppose, but those are ancillary to
> just being able to add the darn thing to my slice and run something on
> it.  With the added constraint of time (arbitrarily chosen amount),
> this also would implicitly test things like correct operation of node
> manager, correct opertaion of "dialback to PLC", availability of
> resources (CPU load, disk, memory), and so forth.

yes, that kind of test sounds wonderful.  it would probably only take you
or anyone else out there a couple of days to hack it up too.

cheers,

steve