Cloner Project - Fall 2003

The goal of Peer-to-Peer Cloner is to facilitate remote management of the file-system and registry of machines in a network. An instance of Cloner on one machine can ensure that its file-system and registry (or subsets thereof) exactly match those existing on another machine. Instances of Cloner on all machines on the network are identical giving it its peer-to-peer character.

The policies controlling the matching and synchronization of states between machines are flexible making Cloner useful in a variety of scenarios. One use is in the quick and automated installation of applications on all machines in a network, or broadcasting a particular machine configuration to all other machines. Another use case is restoring the state of a damaged machine or group of machines, due to a virus or other reasons, to a known healthy state.

Cloner operations can be driven using a full-featured graphical user interface. To support some of the use cases mentioned above Cloner also provides a scripting environment using which it is possible to direct Cloner to carry out a specified set of operations without human intervention, and possibly repeat those operations on several machines.

Cloner Main View

All Those Qualification Tests!

Project Manager Ghosh Starting Qualification

Cloner was indeed a challenging project to work on. Notwithstanding weeks of sleep deprivation, what we came away with was a clear understanding of what is involved in the building of a non-trivial software product, and what it requires of us. Working through each of the phases of the software development lifecycle and undertaking the formal review and test processes was extremely instructive – certainly not something you would get out of most classrooms.

Personally, I found the hands-on approach to managing Cloner very effective and was wearing many hats at the same time – contributing in different roles while working with the different teams.

We really appreciated the degree of independence Dr. Fawcett gave us with respect to project and team decisions, and yet he always seemed to be right around the corner whenever we needed guidance. He was both a demanding customer and accommodating instructor at the same time!

I am proud that we as a team reached all project milestones on time, and met all our deadlines (in spite of hiccups in integration and testing threatening to throw us off gear at one stage). I am particularly proud of how we managed to fine-tune the exchange of ideas between ourselves in the team – the 800 odd email messages we sent to each other in the span of 2 months was not just communication, but true collaboration. But what we are all most proud of is the fact the Cloner successfully passed all test procedures on Qualification Test day. (Well, except for an incomplete manual/maintenance page on one module). Starting at 6:00 in the evening, Quals went on till 5:00 the next morning! I know that is a record, Dr. Fawcett. And hope it’s a record Software Studio teams in the future don’t have to break!

This project, like its predecessor, was an outstanding success, due not only to diligent and effective management, but also to the dedicated efforts of all the individual teams: Project Manager - Riddhiman Ghosh Software Architect - Mike Woodruff Test Team - Vishali Chandrimouli - Leader
Abhishek Jain
Sashidhar Kokku
Mithun Shanbhag
Xin Zhao Communication and File Transfer - Kedar Gangal - Leader
Jovial Shah
Ramiswamy Krishnan-Chittur Registry Editor - Mithun Shanbhag - Leader
Arun Iyer
Mayor Oberoi Scripting - Xin Zhao - Leader
Prateek Dalvi User Interface and Reporting - Chiu-Ming Wang - Leader
Yogeshkumar Khatri

The whole Team

Arun Iyer(left image on left), Mithun Shanbhag (left image on right), Mayor Oberoi (right image in middle)

Xin Zhao (left image on right) and Prateek Dalvi (right image second from right in back)

Chiu-Ming Wang (third from left) and Yogeshkumar Khatri (on right in back)

Kedar Gangal (second from left), Jovial Shah (left), and Ramiswamy Krishnan-Chittur (right image, second from right)

Vishali Chandrimouli (front), Abhishek Jain (back on left), Sashidhar Kokku (back middle)
Mithun Shanbhag (also Team Leader, shown above), Xin Zhao (also Team Leader, shown above)

Riddhiman Ghosh (third screen shot and center), Mike Woodruff (Software Architect, center), Vishali Chandramouli (Test Team, center), Kedar Gangal (Communication and File Transfer, left), Mithun Shanbhag (Registry Editor, right), Xin Zhao (Scripting, right), Chiu-Ming Wang (User Interface, left)

Pizza then Conference before Test

CSE784 - Cloner Project