[Planetlab-users] Application management with Plush

[Amin Vahdat]

Hello PlanetLab Users,

We have just released a new version of Plush that includes many
features for easing application deployment on PlanetLab, including an
XML-RPC interface and integration with SWORD for resource discovery.
Plush is an application management infrastructure that simplifies
executing, monitoring, debugging, and remotely controlling
applications running in large-scale distributed systems.  More
information about Plush can be found at http://plush.ucsd.edu.

We believe that plush can address many of the requests that have
gone across this list lately.

Our latest release also includes a GUI called Nebula.  Nebula allows
PlanetLab users to visualize their applications running across
PlanetLab.  Some of the key features include:

- A "World View" of PlanetLab that shows each site's location
graphically on a world map.  Users can zoom in and watch the sites on
the map change color during application execution to visualize
progress. Users can also SSH directly to PlanetLab hosts by simply
right-clicking on a host.

- The World View interfaces with CoMon, allowing users to visualize
the load, memory, or bandwidth usage on PlanetLab hosts.  Users can
interact directly with PLC to add or remove nodes from their slice, or
renew their slice.

- An "Application View" allows users to build a Plush application
specification.  The application specification describes all aspects of
the execution, and supports advanced features for managing
applications, including synchronization across hosts.

- A "Host View" shows all hosts assigned to the user's slice in a
more textual, list-based format.  From this window, users can SSH
directly to hosts, issue commands to several hosts simultaneously, and
watch the status of hosts change during application execution.

To see some screenshots and learn more information about Nebula and
Plush, please visit http://plush.ucsd.edu/nebula/index.html.

Amin Vahdat on behalf of Jeannie Albrecht, Ryan Braud, Darren Dao,  
and Alex Snoeren
http://plush.ucsd.edu