Using virtualization to protect the proprietary material science applications in volunteer computing
Nikolay P. Khrapov, Valery V. Rozen, Artem I. Samtsevich, Mikhail Anatol'evich Posypkin, Vladimir Sukhomlin, Артем Ромаевич Оганов · Open Engineering · 2018
Abstract USPEX is a world-leading software for computational material design. In essence, USPEX splits simulation into a large number of workunits that can be processed independently. This scheme ideally fits the desktop grid architecture. Workunit processing is done by a simulation package aimed at energy minimization. Many of such packages are proprietary and should be protected from unauthorized access when running on a volunteer PC. In this paper we present an original approach based on virtualization. In a nutshell, the proprietary code and input files are stored in an encrypted folder and run inside a virtual machine image that is also password protected. The paper describes this approach in detail and discusses its application in USPEX@home volunteer project.