Virtual Workspaces - VWS

DEPRECATED: The most recent version is TP1.3.3.1

Version TP1.2.3 - Virtual Machines Technology Preview 1.2.3

This is a technology preview of the virtual machine based Workspace Service. The workspace service provides a gateway to a set of resources configured with the Xen (2.0.7 or 3.0.x) implementation of virtual machines.

The infrastructure is composed of:

1. The Workspace Factory Service implemented for the GT4 Java container that allows a grid client to deploy a Xen-based workspace (described by workspace metadata and a Xen image) according to a deployment request specifying resource allocation and length of deployment.

2. The Workspace Service implemented for the GT4 Java container that allows a Grid client to manage a workspace by starting, stopping, pausing, or destroying it.

See the Features page for general information on the Workspace Service's functionality.

You can download the software from the downloads page.

Documentation

• Interfaces Guide: explains the capabilities and semantics of the service in detail.
• User Quickstart Guide: for testing or using an existing Workspace Service installation.
• Administrator's Guide: for deploying the Workspace Service and backend on resources.
• Plugins overview
• Infrequently Asked Questions

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Duncan Penfold-Brown, Stu Gott, Ken VanDine, and Marty Wesley for their help with this release.

Changelog vs. TP1.2.2

• Significant documentation updates including the addition of a guided User Quickstart and the Workspace Marketplace.

• Added the ability to specify multiple partitions for one VM. There is a restriction in this version that only one partition file may be used with the propagation mechanisms, the other partitions must be cached or on a shared filesystem. (Bug 5216)

• Added the ability to create blank partitions on the fly if the client specifies to do so by sending a storage request (the MB of blank space needed) in the resource requirements.

  Currently this hardcodes the filesystem to create on the blank partition (the default is ext2), in the future this may be specifiable by the client. (Bug 5215)

• Added an HTTP transfer adapter for pre- and post-deployment staging. Included is the ability to provide checksums that will be checked after the transfer as well as decompression functionality. For more details, see the Optional parameters documentation. (Bug 5219)

• Added the ability to choose hypervisors in the resource pool based on what networking associations they support. For example, a request may arrive for a workspace to have NICs on two separate networks: the pool node selection algorithm will use the requirement to support both of these networks in its search. (Bug 5214)

• The workspace types schema, workspace_types.xsd, has a new namespace: the "2006/08" part of it is now "2007/03".

• Resolved Bug 5211: networking allocations were not backed out (returned to pool) under all error conditions during initial request processing.

• Resolved Bug 5212: queries on the Workspace Factory resource properties gave incorrect asssocaition information after a container restart.

• Resolved Bug 5213: the Advisory IP acquisition method was being incorrectly validated.

• Resolved Bug 5217: the workspace-control program was not backing out DHCP policy additions under all error conditions.