OGF 20, Manchester, UK
7th – 11th May 2007
Introduction
During This meeting I attended the following Sessions:
Monday
2nd International Workshop on Campus and Community Grids, continuing
interoperability, (All Day)
Tuesday
Keynote, The Social Grid, Tony Hey
Keynote: The Grid as a Complex System: Faster, Bigger, Better Science on Global
Grid Infrastructure, Peter Coveney
Software Licensing for Grids BoF. Presentation and Notes
Wednesday
Grids Mean Business: Software Licensing - A Way Forward? Presentation 1,
Presentation 2
Usage Records-WG, Presentation & Notes
The Astronomical Virtual Observatory - Building Operational Services on Pervasive
Grids: Standards in Use, Panel Participant
Thursday
Data Management Area
Friday
Experience with Application Domains Massimo Lamanna (CERN)
Session Reports
Monday
2nd International Workshop on Campus Grids - Program
Session 1
 Introduction
 Campus grid case studies, connecting local services to a wider context (Part 1)
- OxGrid and the UK NGS
- GLOW and US Open Science Grid, Wisconsin
- White Rose Grid
- Crimson Grid, Harvard
- Cardiff Campus Grid
Session 2
 Community grid case studies, connecting local services to a wider context
- eMinerals
-
NEESGrid (or UK NEESGrid)
Data Grids:
ORION
BIRN
European Data Grids
Session 3
 National General Infrastructures, federating smaller grids, specific
mechanisms for engaging infrastructures with different software stacks
- DGrid
- EGEE
- Naregi
- NGS-UK
- OSG
- TeraGrid
Session 4
 Breakout sessions
- User management, passing identities and accounting
- Support models, both systems and users
- Software Licensing within cross organisational systems (This should
be used to lead into the discussion in the Grids Mean Business session
later in the week)
- Data in grids, key topics including, Authenticity and integrity, access
controls, technology evolution management.
Session 5
 Panel discussion and roundup on breakout sessions.
This workshop was massively attended with us having at one point to turn people
away from the room as we had reach the point of people sitting in the isles.
The whole aim though was to illustrate that for each of the topics that were discussed
within session 4, a grid of any size, be it organisational or international actually faces
the same problems. From this we aim to give a lead to the further topics that should
be touched on by GIN as it moves from a technical exercise to a useable long term
infrastructure. The output from this workshop is a published OGF informational
document.
Tuesday
Keynote: the Social Grid, Tony Hey
Tony spoke about the importance of knowledge management and used many
examples of institutional repositories etc.
Keynote: The Grid as a Complex System: Faster, Bigger, Better Science on
Global Grid Infrastructure, Peter Coveney
Peter spoke about Reality Grid and his other wide area projects, introducing the
necessity for higher level functionality such as computational steering etc and how we
should ensure that standards are developed in thee higher functionality areas as well
as the lowest levels.
Software Licensing for Grids BoF.
This was a summary session for the Roundtable that was held at SC06 on the Uk eScience booth.
Production Grid Services Roundtable on Licensing
SC06
Participants
David Wallom (University of Oxford)
Laura McGinnis (Pittsburgh Super Computer Centre)
John Gordon (CCLRC)
Dave Berry (University of Edinburgh)
Pete Clark (University of Edinburgh)
Martin Dove (University of Cambridge)
Introduction
During previous meetings of the Production Grid Services Research Group of the
OGF (formerly GGF) there had been several discussions about users having
significant issues with the ability to use licensed software within a grid environment.
This culminated in the decision to host a roundtable discussion on the UK e-Science
stand at SC06. The invitation below was sent to the following companies to
encourage them to attend as well as give them a preliminary heads up that the event
would be taking place.
o Allinea (debuggers, optimizers)
o Aurora Vienna (WIEN2K software package)
o CEI (ensight.com; simulation software)
o Etnus (TotalView debugger)
o Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG; mathematics, statistics, data mining s/w)
o Platform Computing (LSF)
o Wolfram (Mathematica)
o Visual Numerics (IMSL numerical libraries)
o The Math Works (MatLab)
o Cluster Resources (Moab)
o Altair (PBS)
o The Portland Group (compilers)
Discussion
So as to kick off discussion a set of slides was shown, which included the OGF IPR
agreement. There were two pages of issues, one from the point of view of users,
common scenarios for users within a grid environment and the other vendor issues
which were completed during the discussion.
QuickTime™ and a
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QuickTime™ and a
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QuickTime™ and a
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o Allinea
o Currently has what it considers a grid user friendly license
o It is taken as read that companies exist to make money though
o NAG
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o Consider they are currently licensed for grid systems and have invested
in license models that users want, for example things such as state
wide licenses (e.g. Ohio)
John Gordon
o A very common current scenario now is that we have user one and user
two that are both from separate institutions and want to use resources
within a third institution.
NAG
o A useful approach could be for example cross referencing between
sites for example then, with the software tracking back to the users
how institution to retrieve a license?
Pete Clark
o This could also be true within agile companies.
Platform
o Though a company is often not unwilling to have more open license
T&C there may be technical impediments which mean that this is not
easily achieved without substantial costly re-engineering.
o It is also widely known that site licenses are not perfect
o Moving to usage based models would be much more efficient and cost
effective for many users though may also introduce more technical
problems in other areas, networks etc.
Allinea
o We have for example produced our own separate license monitoring
system.
Visual Numerics
o Our current license is flexible as to who is actually using the code
which would be an advantage within a grid environment.
Dave Berry
o It should be noted that usage based licensing is not going to solve all
the problems either
Ohio SCC
o It is a case of this type of model of license would never ever be
supported by a SCC due to load etc that it could introduce.
o Other common problems are;
 mixed usage where you have dual academic and commercial
usage of a system
 shared usage between commercial companies…
Allinea
o Why do we all do Academic licenses,
All (ish)
o Challenging blue sky usage of products to show full capabilities
o future business from people already used to certain products
Martin Dove
o The downside of pay as you go is that within an academic environment
you discourage testing and mistakes by researchers who may
otherwise have produced new outputs and hence more challenging
usage of products
Platform
o It is important that we don’t confuse the model used with charging
which is a different argument.
o John Gordon
o With grids becoming more ubiquitous there will be a proliferation of
models, they must though comfortably live together
o TotalView
o Who do we license to within this environment?
o NAG
o The real way forward is to look for very good hybrid models that are
flexible as we pass from one environment to another
o Adjustments need to be more easily possible
o Allinea
o That is very possible but of course dependant on the types of software
that you are dealing with, i.e. applications would have a very different
usage profile to debuggers who are different again to schedulers.
o The technology is already there for user tracking within a wide area
‘grid’ which could be used.
o Mathematica
o The current model requires the IDs of the machines on which you wish
to run which would be fine for a tightly coupled grid but not so much
for ad-hoc systems
o Examples within current environments where this would work would
be where licenses were purchased by Virtual Organisations and
distributed across their resources.
Conclusion and way forward
It was decided that the best way for would be for those involved to try to document
the use cases of their software has been used within a grid environment. This would
mean little extra work for the commercial organisations but hopefully be of great
benefit to users. The model we would hope for is where the company within for
example its support FAQ has a section on approved license models within grid
environments e.g. with short write-ups based on answers already given to current grid
users questions of support or sales staff.
This could then be referenced from within the Production Grid services website as
well as from National Grid projects sites.
Steve Little
Northern European Sales Executive
Platform Computing Limited
Units 18/19, Building 2
Intec Business Park, Wade Road
Basingstoke, Hampshire
RG24 8NE, UK
www.platform.com
slittle@platform.com
+44 (0) 1256 370510
Chris Gottbrath
Product Manager
Etnus
24 Prime Parkway
Natick, MA 01760
508-652-7735
chris.gottbrath@etnus.com
www.etnus.com
Terasaka Haruo
Center for Collaborative Research
Institute of Industrial Science
The University of Tokyo
4-6- 1, Komaba, Meguro-ku,
Tokyo, 153-8505, JAPAN
+81-3-5452-6601
terasaka@iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Susanne M. Balle, Ph.D.
Senior Member of Technical Staff
High Performance Technical Computing
Division
Hewlett-Packard
MS ZKO2-3/N30
110 Spit Brook Road
Nashua, NH 03062-2698
603-884-7732
susanne.balle@hp.com
Steve Scalpone
The Portland Group
Two Centerpointe Drive, Suite 320
Lake Oswego, OR 97035
503-682-2806
steve.scalpone@pgroup.com
www.pgroup.com
Silvina Grad-Freilich
MATLAB Deployment Marketing Manager
The Math Works, Inc.
3 Apple Hill Drive
Natick, MA 01760-2098
508-647-7189
sgrad@mathworks.com
www.mathworks.com
Rob Meyer
CEO, President
Numerical Algorithms Group, Inc.
1431 Opus Place, Suite 220
Downers Grove, IL 60515-1362
630-971-2337 ex. 215
rmeyer@nag.com
www.nag.com
Andreas Landhauber
Solutions & Innovation
Scientific and Technical ICT/ HPCeScience
T-Systems Solutions for Research GmbH
Bunsenstrabe 10,
37073 Gottingen, GERMANY
+49 551 7092379
andreas.landhaeusser@t-systems.com
Dr. John W. Cobb
R&D Staff Member
Computer Science and Mathematics Division
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
One Bethel Valley Road
P.O. Box 2008, MS-6016
Oak Ridge, TN 37831-6016
865-576-5439
cobbjw@ornl.gov
M. Sean Fitzgerald
Vice President of Technology and Consulting
Visual Numerics, Inc.
2500 Wilcrest Drive, Suite 200
Houston, TX 77042-2759
713-954-6410
sfitzgerald@vni.com
Wednesday
Grids Mean Business: Software Licensing - A Way Forward?
Chaired by the Grid Computing Now KTNs Ian Osborne, he first gave a presentation
on why from the industrial p.o.v licensing is an issue. I gave the second presentation,
giving a summary of the PGS Licensing session from the previous day. This was
intended to summarise the number of different issues that had been identified.
The output from this session is an agreement that a number of those present would
agree to construct a set of model use cases within which licensing in a grid
environment would be able to be described. This could then be used as a resource by
users (both commercial and academic) to negotiate suppliers. It would show how
other companies had worked out a suitable licensing model.
Usage Records-WG
Following on from the release of the version-1 standard into public comment for the
second time, this session was used to sound out how we would consider extending it
towards version 2. It has been shown that although good for computation there is a lot
of extra functionality needed for storage, networking and overall of a service.
The Astronomical Virtual Observatory - Building Operational Services on
Pervasive Grids: Standards in Use, Panel Participant
Attending the final two sessions of this workshop did not really allow me to get too
much specifically from the talk. I was though asked to be on the panel as a person
involved in production grids and production issues.
Thursday
Data Management Area
Attended the first three sessions of this but found that even though this was supposed
to be an EGEE User Forum session that these session were dominated by
infrastructure people. The disconnect between any other user than particle physics and
the EGEE infrastructure developers was never more clear!
Friday
Experience with Application Domains
This session was much more application focused and useful. If did show the number
of user areas that were working on EGEE.