Undergraduate Thesis Work

[Travis Vachon <Travis.F.Vachon@williams.edu>]

To whom it may concern

I am a third year Computer Science major at Williams College in
Williamstown, Massachusetts looking into thesis work to complete the
honors program for my degree.

To fulfill the requirements for this program, I am required to perform
independent research during the fall semester of next year leading into a
Senior Thesis during our January term and the spring semester of 2006.

I'm currently hoping to do research into virtual machines, first by
acquainting myself with virtualization techniques in general, and then by
trying to focus in on modern projects, of which Xen seems to be ideal,
given its open source nature and the recent attention it has gotten from a
number of sources.

Once this is done, for my thesis I would like to attempt to either extend
the functionality of Xen, or use Xen in a way that is of interest to the
virtualization community.

I am e-mailing this list because I am hoping to get the input of the Xen
developers on current long term projects within Xen or using Xen that
would be appropriate for this kind of project (approximately 4 1/2 months
of work, after research is complete, carrying an otherwise full
course load).

Essentially, I am hoping for answers to the following questions:

1) What additional functionality is being considered on the time scale I'm
looking at? Of course, I assume that most of the projects on the Xen 3.0
roadmap are being incorporated into the next release of Xen this summer,
so work on most of these projects would be repetitive. What kinds of
additional projects are being looked into within the next year?

2) What kinds of projects utilizing Xen are being looked at? What kind of
research would be useful?

3) How viable is this idea? I will need to have an idea for a thesis
pretty much pinned down at the beginning of the fall semester next year
(around September). Should I continue to pursue Xen as a topic for
research and thesis work?

4) What is the best way to continue to stay in touch with the community?
Is this the best list? If this e-mail would be better served, or would be
more appropriate on another list, where should I send it?


Thank you very much for reading this e-mail, and please excuse me if I
have posted this in the wrong place. I appreciate any responses (even
"This is the worst idea I've ever heard" or "What are you thinking?"), and
I look forward to further communication with any interested parties.


Thank you again!

Travis Vachon, Williams College class of 2006



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