Xen project Mailing List

Hello Simon, all,

1. Is this academic project, or it have specific goals and areas of application? Would be good to have some practical use-cases and well formulated list of problems (we all feel these by guts, but...), it aiming to solve. IMHO that will help to prioritize functionality and get usable result faster :)

It is kind of both, however we aim a strong focus on real world problems: IoT, Mobile Edge Computing (MEC), Automotive, Virtual Network Functions (VNFs), and others.
We have played with many Unikernels (ClickOS, Mirage, Rump, OSv, and others) and tried to apply them in the several areas. While doing this, we noticed that each area benefits differently from the properties that Unikernels give - which is great (e.g., instant boot times for MEC, high performance for NFV, resource efficiency for IoT). However, building and maintaining new Unikernels (as we did with ClickOS, MiniCache, and Minipython) is currently painful.
Because of different focuses on properties and ported/implemented applications, most Unikernel today are bound to their own OS layers (e.g., ClickOS uses a different Mini-OS than Mirage). Each application requires a different subset of OS layers but also enables different optimizations of them.

In order to solve this, we came up with the Unicore proposal. But I agree with your suggestion at this point: It helps for the project start to focus on some initial areas. For now, I hope this is driven by the first contributors, and I have personally IoT in mind. Since the project goal is so ambitious, we should keep the long-term goal in mind from the beginning.

Yes, that's exactly what I meant :)

And IMHO it would be good to not have very abstract goals - and you named first real one - IoT.

Do you have real-life use-case with real-life hardware to implement within this IoT?

For example, popular IoT devkit, people can use and join this efforts? And real, useful application for it?

My interest here is mostly disaggregation and security - to have minimal, but still functional service domains, built strictly for specific functionality.

So far we (team, I working with) are using BuildRoot to create Dom0/stubdoms/driverdoms/etc. based on Linux (yet).

In our case (at least, right now) guest systems are heavy VMs(Windows/Linux/*BSD/QNX) with GPU passthrough (And not only GPU, but other controllers, test boards, etc.).

Hardware domains most likely to be based on the OS-es, which have proven and stable hardware support base (Linux, *BSD), but there are still need in service domains - like TUI(Text UI) domain, where users are interacting with host, stub-domain, dom0, which starting hardware domains, etc.

So, that could be one more goal - minimalistic service domains for x86/64 platform.

Another goal would be virtualization in Automated Control Systems area - but it's too early (for me, at least) to talk about it yet.

Does anybody have other _specific_ targets for Unicore in mind?

2. Does any security subsystem planned? XEN have XSM/FLASK, but IMHO is should be supplemented by some security layer in control/stub domains as well. So far only known implementation is OpenXT, but it is.... very specific. Probably some generalized security layer needed in Unicore to supplement FLASK/XSM... Correct me please, if I misunderstanding :)

I agree that many projects (especially embedded, stubdomains, driver domains, NFV) have a vested interest in security and isolation. In my view, XSM/FLASK further restricts what a VM can do and sounds kind of orthogonal to the functionality of a VM (am I right?). The fact that Unikernels should only pick components that are actually required to do the job reduces the attack surface compared to general purpose OSes.
Do you see further value with FLASK/XSM which requires early implementation and design decisions for Unicore? As far as I can tell something like Flask is implemented mostly in the hypervisor and toolstack, not in the guests themselves, is this right?

Yes, if Unicore is not supposed to be used as Dom0, and if we are considering Unicore domains only as a guests, running in the single security context, that's fine :)

But if, eventually, it will be used as a control domain in multi-tenant system, which should manage XSM/FLASK and fill the gap between real users(and their data) and VMs, restricted by FLASK - it's something to think about. Maybe just not now :) Or it's not one of Unicore goals even :)

Just dreaming to have absolutely minimal service domains, where every byte is known and needed :)

Regards,

Alexander

Thanks,

Simon

Regards,
Alexander

On Fri, Sep 8, 2017 at 3:31 PM, Felipe Huici <Felipe.Huici@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:Felipe.Huici@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:

Hi Wei, Stefano,

Thank you so much for agreeing to be sponsors! I’ll update the document.

— Felipe

============================================================
Dr. Felipe Huici
Chief Researcher, Networked Systems and Data
Analytics Group
NEC Laboratories Europe, Network Research Division
Kurfuerstenanlage 36, D-69115 Heidelberg
Tel. +49
(0)6221 4342-241
Fax: +49
(0)6221 4342-155

e-mail:
felipe.huici@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:felipe.huici@xxxxxxxxx>
============================================================
NEC Europe Limited Registered Office: NEC House, 1
Victoria Road, London W3 6BL Registered in England 2832014

On 9/8/17, 1:00 PM, "Lars Kurth" <lars.kurth@xxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:lars.kurth@xxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:

>@Wei, @Stefano,
>
>On 07/09/2017, 22:16, "Stefano Stabellini" <sstabellini@xxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:sstabellini@xxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I would be glad to sponsor this proposal. I think it will be
of great
> benefit to the ecosystem. Let me know if I need to do anything
>specific.
>
>Basically, all which is needed is an agreement. Which we have from you
>both. Felipe, can then add your names to the proposal.
>
>Looking out for the evolving project and helping (e.g. through
advice) is
>not strictly necessary, but always welcome.
>
>Lars
>

--
Regards,
Alexander Dubinin

--
============================================================
Simon Kuenzer
シモンクゥンツァー
Research Scientist,
Networked Systems and Data Analytics Group
NEC Laboratories Europe, Network Research Division
Kurfuerstenanlage 36, D-69115 Heidelberg
Tel. +49 (0)6221 4342-264
Fax: +49 (0)6221 4342-5264
e-mail: simon.kuenzer@xxxxxxxxx
============================================================
NEC Europe Ltd | Registered Office: Athene, Odyssey
Business Park, West End Road, London, HA4 6QE, GB
Registered in England 2832014

Regards,
Alexander Dubinin

Re: [Xen-devel] [RFC] Unicore Subproject Proposal