Introduction to
eInfrastructure
Jennifer M. Schopf
UK National eScience Centre
Argonne National Lab
Talk Outline

Definition of Grids, eInfrastructure, and
eResearch

JISC plans

Globus Toolkit


Provider of basic infrastructure

Focus on data tools
OMII – Open Middleware Infrastructure

UK repository and distribution of eResearch
tools
2
What is a Grid?

Many definitions – many differences
especially between academics and industry


Both use the buzzword to get funding
My definition

Resource sharing

Coordinated problem solving

Dynamic, multi-institutional virtual orgs
3
Resource Sharing

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Resources can be anything
Computers

Storage/repositories

Sensors and Networks

People and software
Local Control of the resources, and local policies
for their use
Sharing is always conditional

Issues of trust, policy

Negotiation and payment
4
Coordinated Problem Solving

Beyond client-server

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Client Server defines a small set of wellunderstood interactions as the only ones
that can take place
Actions in this space can include

Distributed data analysis

Computation and visualization of results

Collaboration
5
Virtual Organization (VO) Concept
Virtual Community C
Person B
(Administrator)
Compute Server C1'
Person A
(Principal Investigator)


Person E
(Researcher)
Person D
(Researcher)
Person B
(Staff)
Compute Server C2
File server F1
(disk A)
Compute Server C1
Person A
(Faculty)
Person C
(Student)
Organization A
Person D File server F1
(Staff) (disks A and B)
Compute Server C3
Person E
(Faculty)
Person F
(Faculty)
Organization B
VO for each application or workload
Carve out and configure resources for a
particular use and set of users
6
Dynamic, Multi-institutional
Virtual Organizations

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Crossing administrative domains

No one has full control over the resources

Local policy not global

Different local policy on different sites
Community overlays on classic
organizational structures
Large or small, static or dynamic
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What is eScience or eResearch?


Use of distributed resources, in a coordinated way,
across multiple administrative domains to do science or
further your research
“Classic” eScience


Use compute and data resources at many sites to run large
scale simulations for a physics or biology application
Today’s Use Cases



Replicate data across multiple sites to increase reliability,
redundancy and performance
Use one common interface to access a variety of data
resources at multiple sites
Look at a number of available resources to select the one
that best suits the application needs at this time
8
What is eInfrastructure?


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“A framework (political, technological and
administrative) for the easy and cost-effective
shared use of distributed electronic resources
across a geographical area”
“The combination of research infrastructure,
grid, and broadband technologies projects”
“Anything that enables eScience, collaborative
research – distributed, persistent, reliable,
accessible services”
“Broader than Grids - includes things like
digital libraries, networking, etc”
“current Grid-based eInfrastructure model”
9
How does JISC define it?


“Similar to NSF’s cyberinfrastructure
work” (CI==Grids)
Tony Hey (JCSR chair) says
 “A national eInfrastructure to support
collaborative and multidisciplinary research
and innovation is the joint responsibility of
RCUK (OST) and JISC (HEFCs)”
 2006 eInfrastructure–Grid initiatives
continue building advanced Gridempowered infrastructures
 Production quality & ready-to-use SW
 Environments dynamically adaptable to
user needs
10
Malcolm Read has said

E-infrastructure includes:

Networks (internet, light paths…)

Computers (workstations, servers, HPC…)

Access controls (security, AAA…)

Middleware (metadata…)

Finding tools (portals, search engines…)

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Digital libraries (bibliographic, text, images,
sound…)
Research data (national and scientific
databases, individual data…)
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JISC funding for eInfrastructure
July 27 ‘05 press release for additional funds
 http://www.jisc.ac.uk/
index.cfm?name=news_spendingreview



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Continued development of JANET
Further digitisation of major scholarly
collections
Enhancement to e-learning programmes,
(e-assm’t, e-portfolios, e-learning tools)
Development of the e-infrastructure

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Incl development of collaborative env’ts
Development of a shared infrastructure to
support use of institutional repositories
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Much Still To Be Defined

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I’ve been told ~ £11M specifically for
eInfrastructure
Starting in April 2006, 2 years of funding
Programme manager being hired
OST roadmap is basis (due by March, no
draft available yet)
areas are (no mapping to funding amount)



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1:
2:
3:
4:
5:
6:
Middleware/AA/DRM
Networks and Computer Power (Hardware)
Preservation and Curation
Search and Navigation
Data and Information Creation
Virtual Research Communities
13
JISC cont.


When this is better formulated, it will be
broadcast widely
There’s a JCSR meeting in mid February
where some of it should be solidified
14
Questions on Definitions or JISC?
Two Common eInfrastructure
Approaches in the UK


Globus Toolkit
Open Middleware Infrastructure Institute
(OMII) release
16
What functionality is
needed to use a Grid?

Basics:

Run a job

Transfer a file



Find out what’s going on (service and job
monitoring
All done securely
Higher-level

Replication

Higher level data movement

Workflow-scheduling
17
Globus Toolkit
Was Created To Help Applications

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The Globus Toolkit consists of collections of
solutions to problems that frequently come up
when trying to build collaborative distributed
applications
Heterogeneity

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Standards

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Focus on simplifying heterogeneity for application
developers
Working towards more “vertical solutions”
Capitalize on and encourage use of existing
standards (IETF, W3C, OASIS, GGF)
Reference implementations of new/proposed
standards in these organizations
Open source, open contribution model
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Globus is an Hour Glass

Local sites have an their
own policies, installs –
heterogeneity!

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Queuing systems,
monitors, network
protocols, etc
Globus unifies

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Higher-Level Services
and Users
Standard GT4
Interfaces
Build on Web services
Use WS-RF, WS-Notification
to represent/access state
Common management
abstractions & interfaces
Local heterogeneity
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Globus Toolkit:
Open Source Grid Infrastructure
Globus Toolkit v4
www.globus.org
Data
Replication
Credential
Mgmt
Replica
Location
Grid
Telecontrol
Protocol
Delegation
Data Access
& Integration
Community
Scheduling
Framework
WebMDS
Python
Runtime
Community
Authorization
Reliable
File
Transfer
Workspace
Management
Trigger
C
Runtime
Authentication
Authorization
GridFTP
Grid Resource
Allocation &
Management
Index
Java
Runtime
Security
Data
Mgmt
Execution
Mgmt
Info
Services
Common
Runtime
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GT4 Web Services Core

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Supports both GT (GRAM, RFT, Delegation,
etc.) & user-developed services
Redesign to enhance scalability, modularity,
performance, usability
Leverages existing WS standards

WS-I Basic Profile: WSDL, SOAP, etc.

WS-Security, WS-Addressing
Adds support for emerging WS standards
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WS-Resource Framework, WS-Notification
Java, Python, & C hosting environments
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Java is standard Apache
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WSRF & WS-Notification
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Naming and bindings (basis for virtualization)
 Every resource can be uniquely referenced and has
one or more associated services for interacting
Lifecycle (basis for resilient state management)
 Resources created by svcs following a factory pattern
 Resource destroyed immediately or scheduled
Information model (basis for monitoring & discovery)
 Resource properties associated with resources
 Operations for querying and setting this info
 Asynchronous notification of changes to properties
Service groups (basis for registries & collective svcs)
 Group membership rules and membership
management
Base fault type
22
WSRF vs XML/SOAP

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The definition of WSRF means that the Grid and
Web services communities can move forward on a
common base
Why Not Just Use XML/SOAP?

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WSRF and WS-N are just XML and SOAP
WSRF and WS-N are just Web services
Benefits of following the specs:

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These patterns represent best practices that have
been learned in many Grid applications
There is a community behind them
Why reinvent the wheel?
Standards facilitate interoperability
23
Basic Globus Security Mechanisms

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Grid-wide identities implemented as PKI
certificates
Transport-level and message-level
authentication
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Ability to delegate credentials to agents
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Ability to map between Grid & local identities
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Local security administration & enforcement

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Single sign-on support implemented as
“proxies”
A “plug in” framework for authorization
decisions
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The Challenge of Grid
Resource Management

Enabling secure, controlled remote access to
heterogeneous computational resources and
management of remote computation

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Authentication and authorization
Resource discovery & characterization
Reservation and allocation
Computation monitoring and control
Addressed by a set of protocols & services

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GRAM protocol as a basic building block
Resource brokering & co-allocation services
GSI for security, MDS for discovery
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GT4 Execution
Management (GRAM)

Common WS interface to schedulers


Unix, Condor, LSF, PBS, SGE, …
More generally: interface for process
execution management
Lay down execution environment
 Stage data
 Monitor & manage lifecycle
 Kill it, clean up

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A basis for application-driven provisioning
26
GT4 Data Functions

Find your data: Replica Location Service

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Move/access your data:
GridFTP, Reliable File Transfer (RFT)

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High-performance striped data movement
Couple data & execution management

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Managing ~40M files in production settings
GRAM uses GridFTP and RFT for staging
Access databases through standard Grid
interfaces: OGSA-DAI
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GridFTP in GT4

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Basic file transfer support, and memory-to-memory copies
High-performance, secure, reliable data transfer
Optimized for high-bandwidth wide-area networks

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FTP with well-defined extensions
Uses basic Grid security (control and data channels)
Multiple data channels for parallel transfers
Partial file transfers
Third-party (direct server-to-server) transfers
Performance tuning

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Greatly improve performance over most FTP implementations
On TeraGrid network achieved 27 Gbs on a 30 Gbs link (90%
utilization) with 32 nodes
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Reliable File Transfer:
Third Party Transfer

Fire-and-forget transfer

Web services interface

Many files & directories

RFT Client
SOAP
Messages
RFT Service
Integrated failure recovery
GridFTP Server
Master
DSI
Protocol
Interpreter
GridFTP Server
Data
Channel
Data
Channel
IPC Link
IPC
Receiver
Notifications
(Optional)
Protocol
Interpreter
Master
DSI
IPC Link
Slave
DSI
Data
Channel
Data
Channel
Slave
DSI
IPC
Receiver
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Monitoring and Discovery System
(MDS4)

Grid-level monitoring system used most often for
resource selection

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Uses standard interfaces to provide publishing of
data, discovery, and data access, including
subscription/notification

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Aid user/agent to identify host(s) on which to run an
application
WS-ResourceProperties, WS-BaseNotification, WSServiceGroup
Functions as an hourglass to provide a common
interface to lower-level monitoring tools
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MDS4 Components

Information providers

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Caching registry of data
Trigger Service

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Can be from web services, executables, files
Index Service

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Basic data sources – queue data, cluster
data, etc
Warnings when conditions are met
WebMDS

Visualization of data
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34
Tested Platforms
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Debian
Fedora Core
FreeBSD
HP/UX
IBM AIX
Red Hat
Sun Solaris
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SGI Altix (IA64 running
Red Hat)
SuSE Linux
Tru64 Unix
Apple MacOS X (no
binaries)
Windows – Java
components only
List of binaries and known platform-specific
install bugs at
http://www.globus.org/toolkit/docs/4.0/admin/
docbook/ ch03.html
35
Many Tools Build on, or Can
Contribute to, GT4-Based Grids
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Condor-G, DAGman
MPICH-G2
GRMS
Nimrod-G
Ninf-G
Open Grid Computing
Env.
Commodity Grid Toolkit
GriPhyN Virtual Data
System
Virtual Data Toolkit
GridXpert Synergy
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Platform Globus Toolkit
VOMS
PERMIS
GT4IDE
Sun Grid Engine
PBS scheduler
LSF scheduler
GridBus
TeraGrid CTSS
NEES
IBM Grid Toolbox
…
36
Any questions about Globus?
Open Middleware
Infrastructure Institute
To be a leading provider of reliable interoperable and open-source
Grid middleware components services and tools to support
advanced Grid enabled solutions in academia and industry.

Formed University of Southampton (2004)

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Focus on an easy to install e-Infrastructure
solution
Utilise existing software & standards
Expanding with new partners in 2006
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OGSA-DAI team at Edinburgh
myGrid team at Manchester
Slides compliments of
Steven Newhouse
38
OMII Functions

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Provide a software repository of Grid
components and tools from e-science projects
Re-engineering software, harden it, and
provide support for components sourced from
the community
Contract the development of “missing”
software components necessary in grid
middleware (managed programme)
Provide an integrated grid middleware release
of the sourced software components
Slides compliments of
Steven Newhouse
39
The Managed Programme:
Distribution and Repository

OGSA-DAI (Data Access service)

GridSAM (Job Submission & Monitoring service)

Grimoires (Registry service based on UDDI)

GeodiseLab (Matlab & Jython environments)

FINS (Notification services using WS-Eventing)

BPEL (Workflow service)

MANGO (Managing workflows with BPEL)

FIRMS (Reliable messaging)
Slides compliments of
Steven Newhouse
40
So…




eInfrastructure has many definitions – but
basically it’s Grid computing
JISC has funding for this – but haven’t yet
defined where it will be spent
Globus Toolkit provides many basic tools,
and is incorporated in many projects, esp
those focused on data movement
In the UK, OMII is another useful source of
eInfrastructure software
41
Additional Information


Contact:
 Jennifer M. Schopf
 jms@mcs.anl.gov
 http://www.mcs.anl.gov/~jms
Globus Alliance:
http://www.globus.org
Information about OMII:
 http//www.omii.ac.uk
 s.newhouse@omii.ac.uk


42