PittGrid: Campus-Wide
Computing Environment
Hassan Karimi
School of Information Sciences
Ralph Roskies
Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center
11/15/04
PittGrid
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Present
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Disconnected resources (e.g., CPUs, storage,
and databases) across the campus
Underutilized CPU and storage resources (e.g.,
at campus computer labs in off hours)
Lack of an infrastructure and a set of tools
allowing researchers across the campus to
collaborate on research activities and
departments to share computing resources
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PittGrid: Motivation
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An attractive environment to create a more unified
computational space for all academic personnel to share
in pursuit of research and teaching
An economically efficient, user centered (users will
decide on how they prefer to participate in the
environment and will have the authority to add and
remove their own resources) computing environment
As users interact with the grid and learn how to use it
they will inevitably develop their own services and tools
to meet their wants and needs
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PittGrid: Features
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Resource Location/Allocation Service
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Computational Service
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Find suitable computing resources (CPU, storage,
etc.) for their tasks
Provide access to and utilize powerful computing
resources available for compute-intensive tasks
Collaboration Services
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Facilitate collaboration on research and teaching
activities
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PittGrid: Plan
Develop a prototype PittGrid in phases
 Develop an infrastructure and a set of
generic tools useful for the research
community at Pitt
 Work closely with CSSD to design and
develop PittGrid
 Work with CSSD to maintain PittGrid
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PittGrid Prototype: Partners
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School of Information Science
Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center
Computing Services and Systems Development
Center for Computational Biology and
Bioinformatics
Department of Chemistry
Department of Pharmacology
Department of Physics
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PittGrid Prototype: Phase I
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Objective
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To provide the ability to access additional CPU time
and memory in order to run complex calculations
using existing resources
Functionality
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Allow users to submit jobs involving complex
computations to underutilized CPU’s participated to
the PittGrid network
Upon submission of a job, this service would search
for available workstations and clusters that participate
in PittGrid and that can meet the requirements of the
job
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PittGrid Prototype: Phase I
Tasks
Identify available resources
 Define membership policies
 Install the infrastructure (a middleware)
 Develop and customize the middleware
 Test the installed infrastructure
 Develop grid services
 Test the grid services
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