Mobile e-Lab: A Mobile Personalized Virtual Research Computing Environment

In today´s scientific research, computers and networks are playing an increasingly important role in the laboratory. It is desirable to researchers that any machines outside the laboratory provide a uniform, consistent, desktop computing environment and the ability to access private laboratory computing resources when outside the familiar work place. This paper proposes a system called mobile e-Lab, which aims to present researchers with such a consistent environment, including customized software, personal data, private network resources accessing and other abilities on any computer attached to an IP network, enabling researchers to work anywhere as if they were at their own laboratories, without the constraints of mobility and geographical location. Based on the virtual machine technology, the user´s entire computing environment - including operating system, installed applications and personal data - can be encapsulated to be a virtual disk via network. With the OS browser, a general virtual platform, the user can appoint a virtual disk in the network and create an OS instance with which to operate, which is the same as the one in his laboratory. The mobile e-Lab also provides a virtual network facility, which allows users to operate with their private computing resources in their laboratory LAN transparently.