Implementing the Emulab-PlanetLab Portal: Experience and Lessons Learned

Emulab's PlanetLab portal, hereafter known as the "portal," provides access to the large-scale, geographically distributed resources of the PlanetLab testbed using the integrated Emulab interface. The portal provides sophisticated resource allocation, configuration, and management services, while hiding from the user the underlying low-level detail and complexity of distributed resource provisioning and failure management. Moreover, it does so while minimizing the impact on the underlying PlanetLab system.

In the process of creating this portal and tracking PlanetLab's evolving third-party service API, we identified several key issues in the design of such platforms and the management systems built on top of them. This paper uses our portal as a basis for discussing these issues, and presents the lessons we have learned during its design and implementation.