Introduce chapters with a quick rundown

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Marco Martini
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\section{Conclusions}
This thesis has presented the design, implementation, and evaluation of a unified platform for experimental data access and documentation in the context of the RFX-mod2 experiment, which aims to study the physics of fusion plasmas and magnetic confinement in Reversed Field Pinch (RFP) configuration.
This thesis has presented the design, implementation, and evaluation of a novel Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solution based on a Wayland-native RDP gateway and an OCI containerization layer for session management. The project was motivated by the growing need for a high-performance, secure, and scalable remote desktop system that can meet the demands of modern, graphics-intensive applications on Linux platforms.
The evolution from RFX-mod to RFX-mod2 has brought substantial upgrades to the experimental infrastructure. These include modified mechanical components, an updated electrical configuration, and a more advanced CODAS (Control, Data Access, and Communication Systems). In addition to improving operational performance and machine reliability, these enhancements significantly expand the range of available diagnostics. This increased data richness provides deeper insight into plasma phenomena but also introduces the complex challenge of efficiently managing, accessing, and interpreting large volumes of data.
The limitations of traditional VDI solutions, such as high latency, inefficient resource utilization, and reliance on the legacy X11 display server, were the primary challenges addressed in this work. By leveraging the modern Wayland display protocol, the proposed system offers significant improvements in performance and security. The integration of a hardware-accelerated RDP gateway ensures a smooth and responsive user experience, even with demanding graphical workloads.
To address these challenges, this work has developed a unified platform that integrates two core components:
The use of OCI containers for session isolation is a key contribution of this thesis. This approach not only enhances security by sandboxing user environments but also allows for more efficient and dynamic allocation of system resources. Each user session runs in a lightweight, isolated container, which minimizes overhead and improves the overall scalability of the VDI platform.
\begin{itemize}
\item \textbf{Experiment Logbook Management:} A web-based application designed to manage semantic information, enabling researchers to efficiently document, retrieve, and contextualize experiments. By incorporating detailed logbook entries, this system enriches raw diagnostic data with experimental configurations, objectives, and observations, supporting reproducibility, collaboration, and cross-experiment analysis.
\item \textbf{Scientific Data Access:} The Query Engine system was developed as a framework for efficient, scalable data access and analysis of experimental data. This component allows researchers to construct, manage, and reuse data processing logic across multiple shots, streamlining access to a large volume of diagnostic data and supporting advanced data analytics workflows.
\end{itemize}
The results of performance evaluations highlight the Query Engine's efficiency and scalability across different deployment configurations, demonstrating its potential to handle the increasing data demands of RFX-mod2 experiments effectively. By integrating these two components, the unified platform provides a more accessible and integrated framework for managing and analyzing experimental data, ultimately improving the efficiency and reliability of the entire research workflow.
The evaluation of the system, through a series of benchmarks, has demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed architecture. The results show significant improvements in terms of latency, CPU and GPU performance, and resource consumption compared to existing solutions. This work has successfully demonstrated that a combination of Wayland, hardware-accelerated RDP, and containerization can provide a superior VDI experience on Linux.
\section{Future Works}
While the unified platform has addressed the key challenges identified in this thesis, several avenues for future work remain:
While the proposed VDI solution meets its primary objectives, there are several avenues for future research and development that could further enhance its capabilities:
\begin{itemize}
\item \textbf{Organizing the Experiment Hierarchy:} Establishing a more effective structure for the experiment hierarchy by organizing entries such as experiments, campaigns, runs, and shots will be essential. This could be reflected in a RESTful API structure to provide consistent and predictable access patterns across the platform.
\item \textbf{Enhanced Protocol Support:} While RDP was chosen for its wide support and performance, future work could involve adding support for other remote desktop protocols, such as VNC or SPICE, to provide greater flexibility.
\item \textbf{RESTful Query Management:} Exposing queries via REST endpoints with clear, unique names would simplify integration with external systems, particularly for retrieving summaries. However, this requires careful consideration of naming conventions to avoid confusion and ensure consistency.
\item \textbf{Seamless Application Mode:} Implementing a seamless application mode, where individual applications are streamed instead of the entire desktop, would provide a more integrated experience for users similar to what Microsoft does with its WSLg project.
\item \textbf{Collaborative Logbook Input:} Enabling collaborative editing for logbook entries, including real-time multi-user input, will enrich experiment documentation and support dynamic workflows.
\item \textbf{Flexible Structures of Logbook Entries:} Since experimental requirements can evolve rapidly, future work should include support for defining flexible structures and fields within logbook entries to effectively accommodate these changes.
\item \textbf{User-Specific Views:} Supporting role-based front-end views for each user will make the system more intuitive and tailored to individual workflows.
\item \textbf{Content Identifiers for Queries:} Introducing Content Identifiers (CIDs)~\cite{ipfsContentAddressing} for queries can reduce duplication, improve traceability, and support robust verification mechanisms -- particularly important for tracking changes to MDSplus data.
\item \textbf{Web-based Management Interface:} A web-based management interface could be developed to simplify the administration of the VDI platform, allowing administrators to manage users, sessions, and resources through a graphical interface.
\item \textbf{Audio and Peripheral Redirection:} Further work is needed to implement robust peripheral redirection (e.g., USB devices, printers) to provide a more complete remote desktop experience.
\end{itemize}
In summary, the unified platform developed in this thesis represents a significant step toward addressing the challenges of managing and analyzing the growing volumes of data produced by plasma physics experiments. By integrating semantic documentation with efficient data access, it provides a foundation for more advanced data analytics and collaborative research, paving the way for future improvements and scientific discoveries in the RFX-mod2 experiment and beyond.
In conclusion, the VDI solution presented in this thesis provides a solid foundation for a modern, high-performance remote desktop platform. The proposed architecture is both scalable and extensible, and the suggested future works offer a roadmap for its continued development and improvement.