Design, architecture and implementation of a resource discovery, reservation and provisioning framework for testbeds

Experimental platforms (testbeds) play a significant role in the evaluation of new and existing technologies. Their popularity has been raised lately as more and more researchers prefer experimentation over simulation as a way for acquiring more accurate results. This imposes significant challenges in testbed operators since an efficient mechanism is needed to manage the testbed's resources and provision them according to the users' needs. In this paper we describe such a framework which was implemented for the management of networking testbeds. We present the design requirements and the implementation details, along with the challenges we encountered during its operation in the NITOS testbed. Significant results were extracted through the experiences of the every day operation of the testbed's management.