Grid Tools and Services
From Cidays
Contents |
[edit] What is a grid?
The answer varies depending on whom you ask!
- International Science Grid this Week: What is a grid? A crash course in grid computing
Grid computing is a way of connecting computing resources to share their computing power. Computer grids allow access to computing resources from many different locations, just as the World Wide Web allows access to information. These computing resources include data storage capacity, computing power, sensors, visualization tools and much, much more. Using a grid, someone sitting at one computer can harness the combined capabilities of hundreds and thousands of computers, providing researchers with the extra power to make faster progress in their work. Read more...
- CERN: GridCafe
- Ian Foster, Director of Computation Institute at University of Chicago: articles and links
- U.S. National Center for Supercomputing Applications What is the GRID?
- OSG: What is Grid Computing?
- Open Grid Forum: Understanding Grids
[edit] Condor
Condor is a high-throughput batch job system. It works well in both local and grid environments. In a local environment, Condor can utilize dedicated clusters of computers, or non-dedicated computers like the workstation on your desktop. In a grid environment, you can link Condor pools together with Condor-C or flocking, or you can submit jobs to other types of grids, such as Globus, using Condor-G.
[edit] Globus
The Globus Toolkit is a collection of grid middleware that allows users to run jobs, transfer files, track file replicas, publish information about a grid, and more. All of these facilities share a common security infrastructure called GSI that enables single sign-on.
[edit] Virtual Data Toolkit (used by OSG)
The OSG software stack relies on the Virtual Data Toolkit (VDT) middleware, which is itself a packaging and distribution based on the NSF Middleware Institute (NMI) releases of Condor, Globus and other standard Grid middleware. The VDT can be easily installed and configured.
[edit] GridShib
GridShib Integrates federated authorization infrastructure (Internet2's Shibboleth) with Grid technology (the Globus Toolkit) to provide attribute-based authorization for distributed scientific communities
[edit] Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
Service-Oriented Architecture—What Is It, and How Do We Get One? (from EDUCAUSE Quarterly, 3 Nov 2007)
An excerpt:
SOA is built on reusable, shared, networked services, with each service a business function. It is an architecture that seamlessly connects separate technology systems through Web services—reusable software components that use a standardized messaging system—built within an Internet-based platform. It allows different kinds of systems and platforms to communicate with each other in a common language, without custom interfaces. What makes SOA valuable is its ability to reuse business functions in different combinations. With SOA, the application lives "above" these services as an orchestrated business process.
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SOA provides a "single source of truth" for all information, thereby reducing misinterpretation. Instead of transferring the university's (an entire data set upon the request for a single piece of information), the (system) can send only the needed information. This fundamental shift—from shipping data to providing services—has many potential benefits including agility in deploying applications, increased data security, and improved transparency. In addition, because SOA uses Web services to send information directly to the requesting department, a transparent trail of the information's route is created. This is not the case with a data-oriented system, which replicates large batch files from one system or server to another, a method that provides little visibility within the file transfers.
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Migrating to an SOA presents a variety of technical challenges, but IT teams will be well served to consider how to address another major challenge—resistance to change. IT team members need to develop a marketing strategy to "sell" the new architecture to university constituents.
