Virtual Platform Bridge

The gCube framework is a flexible tool for creating e-Infrastructures developed in the context of the D4Science II and iMarine projects. The Virtual Platform Bridge was stimulated by a use case expressed by the FAO community calling for the design and implementation of a solution to inject Web Applications (by means of WAR archives) into the existing gCube-enabled infrastructures. Initially designed to remotely instantiate/remove Web Services and Java Libraries on a single and specific remote hosting environment, the gCore container, the gCube deployment technology has been largely empowered with the Virtual Platform Bridge to manage virtual platforms. In a nutshell, it is an extendible model for transparently interfacing a potentially unlimited number of hosting environments. By exploiting the implementation of this model, the gCube enabling technology is now capable of dynamically instantiating platforms (along with their resources) compliant to such a model. When new software designed to run on a specific platform is detected, a virtual image of the target platform is created, then the software is ported to the remote server and deployed and activated there. Following their activation, newly running units (what they really are depends on the concrete hosting environment) and their entry points are published in the gCube Information system.