Virtual Playgrounds: Managing Virtual Resources in the Grid
[ftp://info.mcs.anl.gov/pub/tech_reports/reports/P1317.pdf] Abstract:
Large Grid deployments increasingly require abstractions and methods decoupling the work of resource providers and resource consumers to implement scalable management methods. We proposed the abstraction of a Virtual Workspace (VW) describing a virtual execution environment that can be made dynamically available to authorized Grid clients by using well-defined protocols. Virtual workspaces provide resources in controllable ways that are independent of how a resource is consumed. A Virtual Playground may combine many such workspaces, as well as other aspects of virtual environments, such as networking and storage, to form virtual Grids, In this paper, we report on the goals and progress of the Virtual Playground Project and put in context the research to date.
Embedding Comunity-Specific Resource Managers in General-Purpose Grid Infrastructure
[ftp://info.mcs.anl.gov/pub/tech_reports/reports/P1318.pdf] Abstract:
An important mode of Grid operation is one in which a community or (as we call it here) a virtual organization (VO) negotiates an allocation from a resource provider and then disperses that allocation across its members according to VO policy. Implementing this model requires that a VO be able to deploy and operate4 its own resource management services within the Grid. We argue that a mechanism that allows for the creation, and subsequent monitoring and control, of managed computations provides a simple yet flexible solution to this requirement. We present an architectural framework that addresses the security, policy specification, and policy enforcement concerns that arise in this context. We also describe an implementation based on Globus Toolkit and Condor components, and present performance results.
A Multipolicy Authorization framework for Grid Security
[ftp://info.mcs.anl.gov/pub/tech_reports/reports/P1324.pdf] Abstract:
A Grid system is a Virtual Organization that is composed of several autonomous domains. Authorization in such a system needs to be flexible and scalable to support multiple security policies. Basing on the Web Services security specifications such as XACML, SAML, and the special security needs of the Grid computing, we have constructed an authorization framework in the Globus Toolkit 4 that can support multiple policies. This paper describes the concepts of our design and introduces the structure and the components of the authorization framework. To show the flexibility and scalability of the framework, we introduce a new blacklist/whitelist-based authorization mechanism that can be seamlessly integrated into the framework.
Using Multiple Grid Resources for Bioinformatics Applications in GADU
[ftp://info.mcs.anl.gov/pub/tech_reports/reports/P1325.pdf] Abstract:
During the past decade, the scientific community has witnessed the rapid accumulation of gene sequence data and data related to physiology and biochemistry of organisms. Bioinformatics tools used for efficient, computationally intensive analysis of genetic sequences require large-scale computational resources to accommodate the growing data. Grid and TeraGrid have proved useful for scientific discovery. GADU is a high-throughput computational system developed to automate the steps involved in accessing the Grid resources for running bioinformatics applications. This paper describes the requirements for building an automated scalable system such as GADU that can run a job simultaneously on different Grids. The paper describes the resource-independent configuration of GADU using the Pegasus-based Virtual Data System that helps in using heterogeneous Grid resources. The paper also highlights the features implemented to make GADU a gateway to computationally intensive bioinformatics applications on the Grid.
Computational Quality of Service for Scientific CCA Applications: Composition, Substitution, and Reconfiguration
[ftp://info.mcs.anl.gov/pub/tech_reports/reports/P1326.pdf] Abstract:
Component-based design can help manage the complexity of high-performance scientific simulations, where it has become increasingly clear that no single research group can effectively develop, select, or tune all of the components in a given application and that no single tool, solver, or solution strategy can seamlessly span the entire spectrum efficiently. Component approaches augment the benefits of object-oriented design with programming language interoperability, common interfaces, and dynamic composability. Our work addresses the challenge of how to compose, substitute, and reconfigure components dynamically during the execution of a scientific application. The goal is to make suitable compromises among performance, accuracy, mathematical consistency, and reliability when choosing among available component implementations and parameters. As motivated by high-performance simulations in combustion, quantum chemistry, and accelerator modeling, this paper discusses ideas on computational quality of service (CQoS) -- the automatic selection and configuration of components to suit a particular computational purpose. We discuss the synergy between component-based software design and CQoS, with emphasis on features of the Common Component Architecture that provide the foundation for this work. We introduce the design of our CQoS software, which consists of tools for measurement, analysis, and control infrastructure, and we discuss directions of future work.
XIOPerf -- A Tool for Evaluating Network Protocols
[ftp://info.mcs.anl.gov/pub/tech_reports/reports/P1354.pdf] Abstract:
The nature of Grid and distributed computing implies network communication between heterogeneous systems over a wide and ever-changing variety of network environments. Often times large amounts of data is stored in remote locations and must be transmitted in bulk. It is desirable to have the bulk data transfers be as fast as possible. However, due to the dynamic networks involved, it is often hard to predict what protocol will provide the fastest service for a given situation. In this paper we present XIOPerf, a network protocol testing and evaluation tool. XIOPerf is a command line program written on top of GlobusXIO with a simple and well defined interface to many different protocol implementations. XIOPerf was created to give users a way to quickly and easily experiment with an open ended set of protocols voer real networks to determine which will best suit their needs. We present a brief study of the overhead introduced by XIOPerf and the performance of it when using a variety of protocols.