http://www.ngs.ac.uk
http://www.grid-support.ac.uk
The National Grid Service
and Globus
Stephen Pickles
<stephen.pickles@manchester.ac.uk>
Technical Director, GOSC
Globus Week, NeSC, Edinburgh, 7th March 2005
7/4/2005
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Outline
• Quick review of NGS today
– Services offered today
– How the NGS can help end-users and projects?
• Looking ahead
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7/4/2005
Expansion – NGS partnership prorgamme
Managing change
What does NGS want of Globus?
What do Globus users want of NGS?
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GOSC & NGS
The Grid Operations Support Centre is a distributed
“virtual centre” providing deployment and operations
support for the UK e-Science programme.
The National Grid Service provides persistent, Gridbased e-infrastructure to UK e-scientists.
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NGS - A production Grid
National Grid Service
Level-2 Grid
* Leeds
Manchester *
* DL
* Oxford
RAL *
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Bristol and Cardiff coming soon
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Gaining Access
NGS core nodes
National HPC services
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data nodes at RAL and Manchester
compute nodes at Oxford and Leeds
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HPCx
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free at point of use
apply through NGS web site
accept terms and conditions of use
light-weight peer review
•
CSAR
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to do: project or VO-based
application and registration
Must apply separately to research
councils
•
all access is through digital X.509
certificates
Digital certificate and
Conventional (username/ password)
access supported
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1-2 weeks
from UK e-Science CA
or recognized peer
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User registrations so far
Number of Registered NGS Users
200
180
Number of Users
160
140
NGS User
Registrations
120
100
Linear (NGS User
Registrations)
80
60
40
20
0
04/03/04
23/04/04
12/06/04 01/08/04
20/09/04
09/11/04
29/12/04 17/02/05
08/04/05
Date
7/4/2005
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Globus Toolkit
• Globus Toolkit version 2
– GT 2.4.3 from VDT distribution
• Job submission (GRAM)
• File transfer (GridFTP)
• Information Services (MDS/GIIS/GRIS)
– Information providers using GLUE schema
• Shell (GSI-SSH)
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Oracle
• Oracle 9i database
• Only on data nodes
• Populated by users/data providers
• Infrastructure maintained by NGS database
administrators
• Used directly or via OGSA-DAI
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OGSA-DAI
• Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA)
• Database Access and Integration (DAI)
• Developed by UK e-Science projects OGSA-DAI and
DAIT
• OGSA-DQP (Distributed Query Processor)
• Experimental service based on OGSI/GT3 on
Manchester data node only
– considering WS-I and WSRF flavours
– Uses Oracle underneath
• Early users from e-Social Science (ConvertGrid,
GEMEDA)
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NGS Core Services: other
In production:
• UK e-Science Certificate Authority
• Information Services (MDS/GIIS)
• MyProxy server
• Integration tests and database
• Cluster monitoring
• Storage Resource Broker (SRB); clients on compute nodes, servers on data nodes
• NGS Induction Courses offered by NeSC training team
In testing:
• VOMS
• LCG Resource Broker
• Portal
In development/on-going:
• Accounting
• Certification tests
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NGS for end-users
• You need a current UK e-Science Certificate
– http://ca.grid-support.ac.uk/
– See your local Registration Authority
• Complete the application form on the NGS
web site, and read the conditions of use:
– http://www.ngs.ac.uk/apply.html
• Wait 1-2 weeks for peer review
• You gain access to all core nodes automatically
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NGS for projects and VOs
• Just need access to compute and data resources for
users in your project?
– short term, we need applications from individuals
– project-based applications will come, currently in
requirements gathering phase
– if in doubt, talk to us!
• Want to host your data on NGS?
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consider GridFTP, SRB, Oracle, or OGSA-DAI
NGS maintains infrastructure
you populate and manage data
for OGSA-DAI, work with NGS to validate Grid Data
Services
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Provisioning services
• NGS resources can be used to provision a portal or
other service for your community
• Deployment and security scenarios are negotiable
• NGS policies (core nodes):
– your portal can present its own, or a delegated user’s
credential to NGS, but tasks should be traceable to initiating
end-user
– you should not run your own services in user space without
prior agreement of NGS and hosting site
• we need to know that services are secure, will not jeopardise
operation of other NGS services, or consume too much precious
resource on head nodes
• Talk to us!
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Expansion
Resource providers join the NGS by
• Defining level of service commitments through SLDs
• Adopting NGS acceptable use and security policies
• Run compatible middleware
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as defined by NGS Minimum Software Stack
and verified by compliance test suite
Support monitoring and accounting
Two levels of membership
1. Affiliates run compatible stack, integrated support
2. Partners also contribute “significant resources”
Bristol and Cardiff going through certification process now.
• supported by “buddies” and NGS-Rollout list
• useful feedback on viability of NGS Minimum Software Stack
• ratification to be considered at next GOSC board (15 April 2005)
Now soliciting prospective visualization partners in next phase of expansion
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Maintaining Compatibility
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Operating a production grid means valuing robustness and reliability
over fashion.
NGS cares about:
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NGS cannot support everything
Everyone wants service-oriented grids
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Caution over OGSI/WSRF has led to wide convergence on GT2 for
production grids and hence some inter-Grid compatibility
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alignment/compatibility with leading international Grid efforts
special requirements of UK e-Science community
easy migration/upgrade paths
growth: minimising cost of membership for partners
based on standards or standards-track specifications
proven robustness/reliability
usability: but this is too big a problem for us to solve alone
– but still settling out: WS-I, WS-I+, OGSI, WSRF, GT3, GT4, gLite
– Significant changes to NGS Minimum Software Stack will require approval
by NGS Management Board on conservative time scales
– but there are potentially divergent forces at work
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Managing evolution
User
requirements
EGEE,
Globus…
Other software
sources
Prototypes &
specifications
ETF
Software with proven
capability & realistic
deployment
experience
OMII
‘Gold’ services
UK
Campus
NGS
and
other
Operations
Grids
Feedback & future requirements
Deployment/testing/advice
Provider
requirements
GOSC
Board
7/4/2005
Current ETF Evaluations: OMII, GT4, gLite
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Divergent Forces?
LCG
GridPP
gLite
DEISA
EGEE
common staff
& procedures
OSG
GGF
OMII
NGS
WS-I+
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common
users
Globus
TeraGrid
GT4 & WSRF
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Dilemma
Compatibility with peer grids matters to our users and resource
providers
• users want to access different grids in same way
• resource providers don’t want to deploy multiple stacks
(especially conflicting stacks)
Non-functional requirements on middleware developers:
1. The less that must be deployed on resource providers’ and client
systems, the better
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want flexible deployment options and cookbooks
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that means sustained engagement in standards and concertation
efforts
2. Commitment to interoperability
•
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hard to reconcile slow pace of standardisation with goals of short-lived
projects
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Requirements on Globus
• good packaging, easy deployment
– first reports on GT4 are very encouraging
• an extended period of stability at the WS
plumbing level
– in contrast to the GT3/OGSI intermission
• keep pre-WS components alive
– could be lowest common denominator for inter-grid
compatibility for some time
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Protocol versions
We would like to be able to guarantee interoperability
by specifying protocol or service versions instead of
software releases.
e.g. “Deploy FTP server that is compliant with GridFTP
2.0” instead of “Deploy the GridFTP bundles that
come with GT x.y.z or later compatible version”
e.g. “Deploy basic execution service complying to OGSABES 1.0, JSDL 1.0, security profile X”
This ain’t easy. It might be impossible.
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Co-allocation,
(co-)reservation
• Lack of these features is retarding imaginative use of
grids
– Significant NGS users want to use MPICH-G2 (or PACXMPI), computational steering and on-line visualization,
coupled models,...
– DUROC looks very stale
• Historically, batch schedulers have not supported
reservation, but this is changing, slowly
• Want ability to place reservations through Globus
APIs and command lines
– even if cannot be universally supported by job managers
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WS Compliance
WS-Addressing, WSRF, WS-N specifications are not
quite finished.
• WS-Addressing now in last call in W3C
– ReferenceProperties has been dropped
• WSRF and WS-N still changing
Will GT4 be updated for compliance when these specs
emerge from the standardisation pipeline?
• timescales, version
What will impact be on interoperability between GT
versions?
• Will existing clients need re-writing, re-tooling, or recompilation?
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Requirements on NGS
What do Globus users want of NGS?
Tell me today.
Or go on record through GOSC help-desk
• support@grid-support.ac.uk
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More Information
NGS: http://www.ngs.ac.uk
GOSC: http://www.grid-support.ac.uk
CSAR: http://www.csar.cfs.ac.uk
HPCx: http://www.hpcx.ac.uk
NeSC: http://www.nesc.ac.uk
Helpdesk: support@grid-support.ac.uk
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