using virtual machines for collaborative research
Collaboration between research groups can be quite difficult. Differences in hardware, software, and operating environments can lead to differences in results or even errors. Overcoming these difficulties can take significant time, or even result in ending the collaboration. A solution is presented and applied to two collaborations between ABB and universities. This collaboration involves using virtual machines as a way to create and deploy environments to each collaborator. The results show that this virtual machine solution allows for significant time savings in experimental setup. Also, collaborators are able to quickly reproduce results and remotely investigate any issues uncovered. Finally, this solution allows experiments to be rerun at later points in time without the need to recreate the environment.
collaborative research