university of virginia experiences with nmi at the university of virginia nmi integration testbed:...

University of Virginia

Experiences with NMI at the University of Virginia

NMI Integration Testbed: Experiences in Middleware DeploymentSpring 2003 Internet2 Member Meeting

Tuesday, April 8, 2003

Marty HumphreyAssistant Professor

Computer Science DepartmentUniversity of Virginia


UVa Campus-Wide Virtual Computer (CWVC, 1995)

• Mentat Legion (1995-2002)• Objectives

• Cycle-scavenging • Convince University people of utility of Grids (“metasystems”)• Serve as testbed for national-scale Grid

• Heterogeneity (e.g., Sun, Dec, HP, IBM, SGI)• Challenges

• Technical (namespace, fault tolerance, scheduling, security)• Non-technical (“pain management”, accounting—sharing)

• Legion Avaki (2002)


Our Experiences with Grids

• Legion (1995 – 2002)• GGF

• Steering Committee• Security Area Director• OGSA Sec co-director (with Raj Nagaratnam, IBM)

• HPDC, SC Program Committees• NPACI• Other Grid efforts: DOE, DOD, NASA IPG• OGSI.NET• MyProxy (with Jim Basney, NCSA)


Why did we get involved?

• Facilitate quality-control on NMI software• It’s incredibly difficult! (e.g., Legion)

• Grids on campus• As research infrastructure

• Grids in the classroom• How do we teach middleware to undergrads/grads?


Plan

• Already using Globus/NWS/Condor-G in many research projects• Replace with NMI “productized versions” of Globus,

Condor-G, NWS (“CHARMM portal”)

• Investigate issues of integrating with Campus information infrastructure • UVa Campus CA• Campus LDAP server• (Re-Visit) Issues of UVa CWVC

• Develop course materials for Grids


Grid Applications for Scientists

• Goal - easy access to grid resources for biologists performing protein folding

• Biologists want• Access to distributed mass storage• Transparent remote execution• Security/authorization• Web-based job submission/steering tools

• Solution: Generic grid tools with customized interfaces for scientific apps


CHARMM

Rgyr

MolecularDynamics Simulations

(Protein Folding)

100-200 structures to sample

(r,Rgyr ) space


Protein Folding on the Grid

Retrieve credentials

Job Monitor

Job Manager Web Service

Based on OGSI TP 4

Job Monitor

CenturionBlue

Horizon

Globus Run

MyProxy Server

Auditing Service

SRB Archive

OGSI Notification

Sink WS

Fetch Cred

DAGMan

Username / password

Input / output URIs

https

Poll request

DAG URI, Sink URI

Start job, send URIs

DAG file

Input files

Retrieve DAG file

GridFTP

GridFTP

Status updates

Unix.NET

Asynch. message delivery

NATIONAL PARTNERSHIP FOR ADVANCED COMPUTATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE


Results / Lessons: Research Projects

• Transition to NMI versions largely straightforward• Immediate upgrades not always necessary

• Issues• NMI components are not entirely “out-of-the-box perfect”• NMI components, at this time, do not contain “full Grid

picture”


Results / Lessons: Integration with Campus Information

• Integrating Grids with UVa standard assurance CA• Can end-user cert sign another cert?• UVa: PKCS#12; Globus: not• End-user issuing largely straightforward; acquiring “Service” certs still

largely geared toward HTTPS (not Globus usage)• Create UVa Web page: “Installing NMI Grids at UVa”

• Issues• Student privacy concerns not always consistent with Grid

mechanisms• “Students of CS650 are allowed to execute jobs on

grad11.cs.virginia.edu…”

• Broader: mechanism alone will not “coerce” resource owners to share


Results / Lessons: Course Material for Grids

• Grad CS Class (CS650, F2002) briefly introduced Grids• In context of Web Services ( “Grid Services”)

• Refining for future classes• F2003 CS650• S2004 Senior-undergrad “Distributed Systems”

• Issues• Principles vs. “current fad”• Is the learning curve too steep?


Bottom Line

• UVa sees NMI as opportunity to “take it to the next level”

• General lessons on the use of NMI• Research projects: effective, but complex• Campus Grid: must want to share• In the classroom: principles vs. “current fad”

• Very compelling progress in NMI program; more to come

university of virginia experiences with nmi at the university of virginia nmi integration testbed:...

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