UnifiedSessionsManager
Virtualization and Cloud Computing

User Centric Service Clouds
Interface Concepts
01.01.005
Copyright © 2009,2010,2011 Arno-Can Uestuensoez <unifiedsessionsmanager@protonmail.com>

The Blueprint

The UnifiedSessionsManager provides user space tools for local and remote on-demand operations.

It scales from a single core CPU of a desktop server up to huge multi-core multi-CPU server farms.

It relies on proven state-of-the-art components by providing glueware for integration and execution.

It covers a considerable share of available products and provides for easy command-line-level integration of almost any additional.

Unified Call Interfaces

The UnifiedSessionsManager offers an integration framework with a seamless interface for the application of various hypervisors, Operations Systems, and user interfaces.
- Hypervisor and Emulators:
  - Qemu/KVM: ctys -t qemu -a create=label:mySession myuser@myhost
  - VirtualBox: ctys -t vbox -a create=label:mySession myuser@myhost
  - VMware: ctys -t vmw -a create=label:mySession myuser@myhost
  - Xen: ctys -t xen -a create=label:mySession myuser@myhost
- Graphical Userinterfaces:
  - CLI: ctys -t cli -a create=label:mySession myuser@myhost
  - RDP: ctys -t rpd -a create=label:mySession myuser@myhost
  - VNC: ctys -t vnc -a create=label:mySession myuser@myhost
  - X11: ctys -t x11 -a create=label:mySession myuser@myhost

Unified Actions and Security

The UnifiedSessionsManager provides a set of generic actions for the creation, usage and termination of user sessions.
These are CREATE, CANCEL, LIST, ENUMERATE, SHOW, and INFO.
- These provide interactive sessions and batch processing.
- No distinctintion between Desktop, Client, and Server Virtualization is required.
- Physical machines and OS access are handled equally to virtual machines.
The inherent security concept based on OpenSSH provides reliable applicability for sessions to local and remote sites.

Services for the User

The focus is on the operation and the configuration of the required runtime elements for distributed environments.
The UnifiedSessionsManager supports...
- ... a generic address schema and aliasses for simplified common addressing.
- ... a set of utilities for a virtualized nameservice.
- ... a plugin architecture for expansion and custom plugins.
- ... commandline interfaces for the automation of provisioning and startup of service sets.
- ... automation tools for the collection of inventory data and provisioning of local and remote configurations.

Generic View to Services...

The detailed analysis of the common tasks used within virtualized environments lead to sessions management facilities by a common generic approach.
Current concepts comprise flat virtual appliances - v-apps - based on the following operational paradigms:
- Desktop Virtualization
  ...is an inherently interactive user session requiring a local user interface.
- Client Virtualization
  ...is basically the same as desktop virtualization.
- Server Virtualization
  ...could be seen as a non-interactive service, providing task oriented machine-access and an interactive console access for provisioning and maintenance.

=> A Common View

The UnifiedSessionsManager does not distinguish between types of virtualization. The remaining distinction is a logical 3-layered approach of serving categories:
- HOSTs: Native access to the contained Operating Systems
- VMs: Virtual Machines - Administration of Hypervisors.
- PMs: Physical Machines - Administration of physical machines.
The logical categorization provides the definition of dependencies for automated operations and nested containment hierarchies.

This founds the basic conceptual building block of v-components .

The big Picture

The resulting overall-architecture depicts an idea for the full scope of features supported by the UnifiedSessionsManager.

The primary vision behind the scenes could be summed up as: "A generic network infrastructure of location independent dynamically relocatable services."

Therefore the interface concept providing a unique syntax becomes the key component for the support of a multi-vendor environment.

This is accomplished by a comprehensive toolset providing generic services for address resolution, inventory management, task automation, distributed access, and additional services.

How does this fit to Clouds and Services?

...Perfectly!
The UnifiedSessionsManager provides the integrated operations of distributed runtime environments and services. This are the components founding a Cloud Computing environment.
The applied approach is generic and scalable from a single host to server farms.
The provided license is GPL3 + FDL-1.3 + CCL-3.0.
The concepts are documented in the
- first version( 01.03.003a01 - 2008.02.11 - ) as a 250pg. online manual ("ctys -H print"),
- from than on as seperate PDF documents.( 01.11.001 - 2010.05.17 - + https://arnocan.wordpress.com ).

What has been defined for now?

The current definition including the implemented facilities provided by the UnifiedSessionsManager provide a toolset for the application of SOA and SaaS as a personal on demand environment.

Additionally stacked VMs - v-stacks - are defined as a vertical design concept, providing a generic component interface of virtualized services - v-components - as a common toolset.

The introduction of CPUs with huge numbers of cores will enable the concept of v-components as a vertical logical design and administrations concept with a flat physical execution environment, where the tasks are actually dispatched and executed on an array of independent CPUs and cores, thus without performance losses.

Supported Systems

The current version supports:
- KVM, QEMU, VirtualBox, VMware(Workstation/Server/Player), and Xen
- Linux(CentOS, debian, Enterprise Linux/UnbreakableLinux(TM),Fedora, Mandriva, MeeGo, OpenSUSE, ScientificLinux, SuSE, Ubuntu),
  FreeBSD, OpenBSD, OpenSolaris, Solaris
  VMware-ESX-Login(CLI), XenServer-Login(CLI,X11,VNC)
- Gnome, KDE, X11, Xfce, FVWM
- TightVN, TigerVNC, RealVNC, rdesktop/RDP, Xterm, Gnome-Terminal, CLI, and Emacs
  Native-Consoles of Hypervisors.
The next versions are going to add support for:
- OpenVZ, VMware(iESX), and XenServer
- NetBSD, (ILLUMOS - when available)
- QNX, and uCLinux - initially for X86 and ARM architectures, RTEMS.

Current Development - Future versions.

The following updates will be based on the current framework:
- Integration of first graphical user interface elements into Gnome, KDE, Xfce, fvwm, and X11.
- Updates for additional hypervisors and operating systems.
- OpenLDAP integration for distributed database access.
- A generic service reallocation layer for dynamic relocation of VMs.
- Bugfixes as required.
For future versions will comprise:
- Reimplementation of the framework with inter-mixed Bash, Perl, Python, Tcl/Tk, C/C++, PHP, JavaScript, and Java.
- Integration into gnome-shell.
- ...more.

Copyright

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UnifiedSessionsManager Virtualization and Cloud Computing