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Isolation with Flexibility:
A Resource Management Framework for Central Servers
David G. Sullivan,
Margo I. Seltzer
Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138
{sullivan,margo}@eecs.harvard.edu
7. Conclusions
Our extended lottery-scheduling resource management framework gives
applications increased flexibility in modifying their resource
allocations while preserving the ability to isolate groups of
processes. We believe that it could be particularly useful on systems
in which many users compete for the resources of a central server, as
in thin-client networks or Web servers used for virtual
hosting. Ticket exchanges allow processes to adjust their allocations
while insulating resource principals that do not take part in an
exchange, and they enable applications to coordinate their resource
usage with each other. Currency brokers provide secure access controls
to currencies, while setuid utilities can be used to circumvent the
default controls in ways that preserve isolation.
In order for our extended framework to be fully effective on large
central servers, more work needs to be done to develop negotiators
that can intelligently carry out ticket exchanges on behalf of users
and applications. Developing such negotiators will be a challenging
task, but one with potentially significant rewards.
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