Dissertaç ˜ao de Mestrado Mestrado em Engenharia Informática Jo ...

6
Integration with VIRTU
The last chapter validated the framework, defined in Chapter 3, in terms of how it met the
requirements, its functionality and also its performance. We now find SmART suitable to be
integrated with the VIRTU virtualization platform.
This chapter describes how SmART can be integrated within the VIRTU tool. First, Sec-
tion 6.1 gives the background of the VIRTU project, together with the motivation for its creation
and a brief description. Then, Section 6.2 presents the VIRTU workflow with the objective of
giving a better perspective of the operations allowed by the tool. The VIRTU architecture is
detailed in Section 6.3, with the description of each component and its interactions with the
other components. Finally, the localization of the integration, both in the workflow and in the
architecture, is indicated and explained in Section 6.4.
6.1 Project Description
A consortium of enterprises and universities, composed of Evolve Space Solutions, Universi-
dade Nova de Lisboa, Universidade de Coimbra, HP Labs and the European Space Agency,
funded by QREN/ADI, came together to develop a virtualization platform known as project
VIRTU.
In Section 2.1.1 we saw that virtualization is a technology for the abstraction of computing
systems which has recently received a considerable number of contributions, despite having
emerged for the first time several years ago. The changes that virtualization allows for in the
IT sector, such as the consolidation of many servers into a single physical machine and the
resulting lowering of hardware, cooling, power consumption and facility costs, short system
maintenance time, great isolation level between virtual machines, etc., have revolutionized the
way IT-recurring companies look at software and hardware deployment.
67