Operational Lessons from Chameleon

Chameleon is a large-scale, deeply reconfigurable testbed built to support Computer Science experimentation. Unlike traditional systems of this kind, Chameleon has been configured using an adaptation of a mainstream open source infrastructure cloud system called OpenStack. In this paper, we discuss operational challenges for experimental testbeds and explain what impact they have on the profile of the operating team. We then discuss methods we developed to alleviate the operational burden and show how they can be used in practice. We conclude with a discussion of our interaction with the user community and describe how experimental platforms create a high potential for community involvement.