CernVM: Minimal maintenance approach to virtualization
P. Bunčić, Carlos Aguado-Sánchez, Jakob Blomer, Artem Harutyunyan · Journal of Physics Conference Series · 2011
CernVM is a virtual software appliance designed to support the development cycle and provide a runtime environment for the LHC experiments. It consists of three key components that differentiate it from more traditional virtual machines: a minimal Linux Operating System (OS), a specially tuned file system designed to deliver application software on demand, and contextualization tools that provide a means to easily customize and configure CernVM instances for different tasks and user communities. In this contribution we briefly describe the most important use cases for virtualization in High Energy Physics (HEP), CernVM key components and discuss how end-to-end systems corresponding to these use cases can be realized using CernVM.