Chameleon: A Scalable Production Testbed for Computer Science Research
Kate Keahey, Pierre Riteau, Dan Stanzione, Timothy M. Cockerill, Joe Mambretti, Paul Rad, Paul Ruth · 2019
Computer Science experiments, whether they comprise the development of new system tools and algorithms or performance evaluation of new hardware, typically require direct access to resources that support deep reconfigurability, the ability to work in an isolated environment, as well as experimenting at scale and on up-to-date hardware. The original Chameleon system was designed to cover a wide range of community needs. Networks continue to evolve, and the network fabric is as much a part of the research focus of Chameleon as the compute or storage. Appliances, i.e., bare metal images, are the main equivalent of “programming tools” in Chameleon. The Chameleon team has developed and supports system appliances to provide access to the variety of hardware on Chameleon and to match the demands of our user community. Chameleon is organized as a set of research or education projects, each providing resources for a number of users. The word “testbed” is thus typically associated with special access resources.