What is Supercell?

The OSUOSL Supercell cluster is a service that will enable projects to do testing for their software on various operating systems. This generally falls into the following types of requirements:

• Continuous build integration on various architectures/operating systems
• Run-time tests of application
• Low level debugging (for non-x86 architectures)

Currently the cluster consists of x86-based virtualization machines using Linux KVM and managed via Ganeti. Users of the system will interact with their VM's via Ganeti Web Manager to create, remove, and access the VNC console to their VM's. The majority of the Supercell infrastructure is powered by Gentoo Linux.

Supercell is currently in early alpha as a few partner open source projects help us test out the cluster. You can sign up to receive an announcement when the cluster is opened up for additional testers by completing our Feedback Form.

What guest operating systems does Supercell support?

The current supported guest operating systems are:

• Debian 32/64bit
  • Lenny
• CentOS 32/64bit
  • 5.5
• Gentoo
• Gentoo Hardened
• Ubuntu 32/64bit
  • Lucid
  • Karmic
  • Maverick

Do you have plans to support other guest operating systems?

We hope to eventually add support for the following operating systems:

• Fedora
• FreeBSD
• OpenSUSE

It would be of great help to us to determine which guest operating systems the community would most like to see us support. Please take a moment to fill out our Feedback Form to share your thoughts and to be notified when Supercell is ready for use by more open source projects.

What about testing on OSX?

We currently have two Mac OS X XServe machines available for testing software on. We only offer shared ssh accounts currently.

Do you have plans to support architectures beyond x86?

We hope to eventually support other architectures, but that is a longer term goal. Eventually, we would like to support the following architectures:

• Alpha
• ARM
• ARMel
• HPPA
• IA-64
• MIPS
• MIPSel
• PowerPC
• SPARC

It would be of great help to us to determine which architectures the community would most like to see us support. Please take a moment to fill out our Feedback Form to share your thoughts and to be notified when Supercell is ready for use by more open source projects.

What kind of hardware is used for the Supercell cluster?

Where can I learn more about the Supercell architecture?

To learn more about how the Open Source Lab uses Ganeti, check out Lance Albertson's recent blog post and his presentation from LinuxCon 2010. Peter Krenesky has also recently announced the release of Django Object Permissions. His post will give you a good idea about how permissions will work for Supercell users.

When can I use Supercell?

Supercell is currently in early alpha. We're rolling out the service to a few project partners for use, and we look forward to their feedback on how we can improve Supercell. We hope to open it up to the wider open source community around Q3 2011. If you would like to receive an announcement when we require additional testers for Supercell and when the service "goes live," please complete our Feedback Form.

I have some ideas about how my project would use Supercell. How can I provide feedback?

We're so glad you asked! We're keen to have the community inform us how they'd like to use this resource. Please visit our Feedback Form and share your thoughts with us.

How much will it cost for open source projects to use Supercell?

We have no plans to charge open source projects for using this service. The creation of Supercell was made possible through a generous monetary and hardware donation from Facebook and their Open Source Team. The OSU Open Source Lab is currently seeking additional Sponsors for the Supercell project.