The DETER Conatiners System

The Containers system enables experimenters to create large-scale ​DETER topologies that support differing degrees of fidelity in individual elements. In order to create an experiment larger than the 400+ computers in DETER, experimenters must use virtualization, simulation, or some other abstraction to represent their topology. The container system guides this process allowing experimenters to create large experimental environments that can be used to gather correct results.

The container system is built on top of the ​Emulab-based resource allocation that underlies the ​DETERlab testbed, extening it to provide multiple implementations of virtual nodes. Most DETER tools that run on physical experiments can be used directly on containerized experiments. Experimenters find working in a containerized experiment very similar to working in physical DETER experiments.

We sketch the model and facility below.

Model of Operation

An experimenter comes to DETER with an experimental topology of computers and networks and an experiment to carry out on that topology, and the container system allocates resources in the configuration specified. The experimenter can directly access the comuters in order to carry out the experiment. The computers themselves are either physical computers or some virtual computers that emulate a computer at an acceptable level of fidelity. Multiple experiments may be in progress at once using DETER resources, and they are protected from interfering with one another.