grid portals itcs 4010 grid computing, 2005, unc-charlotte, b. wilkinson
TRANSCRIPT
Grid Portal
• “A web-based application server enhanced with the necessary software to communicate to grid services and resources”
• “Provides application scientist a customized view of software and hardware resources from a web browser” [1]
[1] “Grid Computing Making the Global Infrastructure a Reality” ed. F. Berman, G. C. Fox and A. J. G. Hey, Wiley, 2003, Chapter 27 “The Grid portal development kit” by J. Novotny.
From a paper “GridSphere: A Portal Framework For Building Collaborations” by J. Novotny, M. Russell, and O. Wehrens
Grid Portals
• Uses a Web browser interface– Can use from anywhere.
• Hides details of Grid middleware– Good!!
Grid Portals
• Provides– Access to grid information– Access to grid services– Automated execution of applications/jobs– Workflow management– File management– Single sign-on to grid resources
Access to Grid Services
• Security Services– management of certificates– access to virtual organization (people)
• Remote File Management– access to files and directories– moving files
• Remote job management– job submission– workflow management
Access to Information
• Portals also provide access to information -- anything related to tasks at hand, including communication with virtual organization.
• In fact, some portals started simply as informational portals in the same vein as web portals such as yahoo.
Grid Portal Toolkit History
Several portal “toolkits” developed since mid-1990’s.
Used for application specific grid projects, orfor general-purpose grid portals
Three-tiered architectureTypical arrangement on early grid portals
From: The Grid Core Technologies by M. Li and M Baker, Wiley, 2005
Proxy Credential server
• Commonly “myProxy” credential management system.
• Used to store grid credentials that can be retrieved as needed to renew credentials for long running jobs etc.
Early Portal Toolkit Examples
1990s:• The Grid Portal Development Kit
(GPDK) (not now supported)– Used Java Server Pages (JSPs) fro
prosentation layer, and JavaBeans to access backend.
• NPACI Grid Portal Toolkit (Gridport) (National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure)
• GridPort 2.0– Perl-based Grid portal toolkit
• Ninf Portal– JSP/Java Servlet front-end
– GridSpeed portal, an extension of Ninf
Application-Based Portals
• Portals often specialized to a particular application.– for example, grid portal for high energy
physics.
• Portal toolkits give ability to taylor portal to application or user.
MPI program
Starting job
From a paper”Building GridPortals: The NPACI Grid Portal Toolkit” by M. P. Thomas and J. R. Boisseau.
NPACI Hotpage Grid portal(based upon GridPort)
Adapted from slides “The NCSA Alliance Portal and the Open Grid Computing Environment Project” by D. Gannon, G. Fox, B. Plale, M. Pierce, M. Thomas, C. Severance, G. von Lazewski, and J. Alameda.
Linked Environments for Atmospheric Discovery (LEAD)
Adapted from slides “Reuseable Grid Portral Components” by M Thomas.
NEES – www.neesgrid.org• George E. Brown, Jr. Network for
Earthquake Engineering Simulation– Large Installations of physical equipment for
earthquake experiments and simulations– Part of the award is to make equipment
available for remote collaborators
• Focus is on collaboration and experimental equipment sharing in addition to access to computation
From slides “The NCSA Alliance Portal and the Open Grid Computing Environment Project” by D. Gannon, G. Fox, B. Plale, M. Pierce, M. Thomas, C. Severance, G. von Lazewski, and J. Alameda.
Network for Earthquake Eng. and Simulation (NEESGrid)
Adapted from slides “Reuseable Grid Portral Components” by M Thomas.
• Early grid portals “tools” not very flexible.
• Tied to specific programming tools and grid software, such as Globus 2.4.
• Specific programming structure not suitable for users to develop portals themselves.
• Not standardized APIs.
Portal Implementation
• Should be flexible, meet grid industry standards, be able to be extended using parts developed by others.
• General approach currently is to use “software components” called portlets.
Software Component
• Object defined by precise public interface and includes a set of standard behaviors.
• Software components contained in a framework.
• Components follow a set of rules to interoperate.
• Installation of components should be easily done.
Portals with Portlets
• Portal server consists of portlets
• Each portlet provides certain functionality and a window within the portal.
• Each portlet can be associated with a particular grid service
• User can have any number of portlets as he/she wishes (will be associated with user’s persistent context).
Portlets provided for:
– Management of user proxy certificates– Remote file Management via Grid FTP– News/Message systems
• for collaborations– Grid Event/Logging service– Access to OGSA services – Access to directory services– Specialized Application Factory access
• Distributed applications• Workflow
– Access to Metadata Index tools• User searchable index
Portal Server
MyProxyServer
MetadataDirectoryService(s)
Directory& indexServices
ApplicationFactoryServices
Messagingand group
collaboration
Event andlogging
Services
Portal Server
Adapted from slides “The NCSA Alliance Portal and the Open Grid Computing Environment Project” by D. Gannon, G. Fox, B. Plale, M. Pierce, M. Thomas, C. Severance, G. von Lazewski, and J. Alameda.
Portlet Approach to Grid Services
Portal Server
MyProxyServer
MetadataDirectoryService(s)
Directory& indexServices
ApplicationFactoryServices
Messagingand group
collaboration
Event andlogging
Services
Portlet1
Portlet2
Portlet3
Portlet4
Portlet5
Portlet6
Adapted from slides “The NCSA Alliance Portal and the Open Grid Computing Environment Project” by D. Gannon, G. Fox, B. Plale, M. Pierce, M. Thomas, C. Severance, G. von Lazewski, and J. Alameda.
A Pane and portlet
ProxyManagerPortlet
The currentVisible pane
Adapted from slides “The NCSA Alliance Portal and the Open Grid Computing Environment Project” by D. Gannon, G. Fox, B. Plale, M. Pierce, M. Thomas, C. Severance, G. von Lazewski, and J. Alameda.
Advantages of Portlet Approach• Easy to add new grid services and reconfigure
user’s view (context)
• Different software developers can provide portals to be plugged into portal– Many parties developing portal and portlet tools --
Jetspeed (Apache), Websphere (IBM), GridSphere, …
• Portal/portlet standard called JSR 168 emerging (portlet Java Specification Request open
standard).
National Science FoundationMiddleware Initiative (NMI)
• Started in 2001 initially over 3 years “to create and deploy advanced network services that simplify access to diverse Internet information and services.”
• Provides a centralized location for important grid software.
• Current NMI package includes Globus, Condor, MPI-G2, and:– a new grid portal project called OGCEGrid
(funding started Sept 2003).
Consortium established “Fall 2003 to foster collaborations and shareable components
with portal developers worldwide”
The following screenshots taken from http://www.ogce.org
Proxy Manager and Job Submit:Obtain/manage Grid credentials to access Grid resources through browser.
Also shown are GRAM job launchers and sample "ping" portlet.
Grid Context:Store arbitrary web objects (movies, web pages, audio
files) in a customizable, annotated directory tree.