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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY / JUNE 02, 2003: VOL. 2 NO. 22
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Special Features:
SMART NEIGHBORHOODS -- NEXT STEP IN GRID SERVICES? PART I
By K.S.Venkatram
This article is the first in a series about "Defining a concept for a Smart
Neighborhood". The article is not a published solution. The article introduces
the reader to a concept for a smarter neighborhood and guides the user through
a comparative analysis and extensibility of a sensor-controlled network
against what is presented in Grid computing.
The article defines a dynamic mechanism that can be integrated with Grid
services. I do expect this concept to interest the Grid community, serve pre-
requisites for management decisions and integrate with the Grid concepts for
LINUX platforms. To any reader interested in the availability, I would like to
say that implementing the smart neighborhood is easy when the framework is
understood.
Summary
Today, a network when connected does conceive a neighborhood for the network
objects installed as part of that network. A network user does typically work
with the concept of neighborhood objects and network computers. A network
neighborhood supports hardware resources, software resources, controllers and
network resources. For any network, the network computers may need to be often
monitored for change in hardware, software inventory and critical resources;
the network user or Administrator or IS personnel may need to locate resources
objects in the neighborhood or enterprise. This manageability is a problem and
solutions today focus on design and ability to administer equipment, software,
backup facilities and management information.
As the enterprise today is mixed with different vendors and solutions, the
reader is presented with an aspect of Network grouping or neighborhoods.
Network neighborhoods are the basis for infrastructure design and ability for
manageability in mixed networks. As the network becomes larger and more
complex, the manageability focus shifts, effective searches for network
objects can be simplified through smarter neighborhoods. This article does
describe the design of an Enterprise Location System to enhance searching for
resources.
The working guideline of the Enterprise Location System (ELS) is to ensure
that equipment, software, backup facilities and management information is
available from a network computer irrespective of the location in the
enterprise grid. The ELS does expect to organize and extend the concept of
domains, workgroups and neighborhoods to that of a "sensor-controlled network"
with an activated "connection point" support to locate resource objects.
At the simple level, as network users, we could use the sensor-controlled
network to search for hardware, software, controller and network resource
objects.
At the next level, today the industry proposes policies for manageability.
This could be an option such as security options set by the various policies
control the access of resources. For any network user, it is common that
certain rights and security options control access to a network object. These
rights or security options could either be infrastructure options or be
consistently applied by application design. In today's manageability,
conceiving smart access is a design and value addition that network users
expect. The concept of the sensor-controlled enterprise does propose such
smart access and looks at supporting administration in mixed grids.
Through a set of articles, I propose for the reader a simple introduction,
then move forward with design and development guidelines for the ELS and
conclude by recommendations and options for manageability. As we work through
the articles, the reader will understand that Grid computing and the proposed
ELS framework align on many principles for interoperability in network
services.
Introduction:
The proposal for the Enterprise Location System (ELS) is also described as a
proposal for a "sensor-controlled network (SensorCN)" or a "sensor-controlled
enterprise (SensorCE)". The design context and specification of the sensor-
controlled network is based on Location Entities and support from the
extensible sensor-controlled services.
I begin with the following concepts and definitions:
"Enterprise Network Resources" The enterprise network resources are
typically hardware, software applications, performance measurement objects and
network manageability objects in the mixed network or grid.
"Enterprise Locations" The enterprise network is a consolidation of mixed
network computers, mixed network resources and mixed network services. In this
mixed grid, the Enterprise Location will be a network address or DNS or
network name for a network computer or server participating in resource
tracking. The Enterprise Location will be identified with the help of sensors,
resource tracking and access.
"Enterprise Location Protocol" The Enterprise Location Protocol defines the
network transport and service in querying resource availability in the mixed
grid.
"Enterprise Location Servers" - The Enterprise Location Server (ELS) will be a
management server that participates in the Enterprise Location System. An
Enterprise Location Server will support registration, discovery and monitoring
of sensors in the enterprise grid. Sensor location, registration, access
information will be stored and synchronized through a database called the
Sensor Resource Database. The Enterprise Location Server is a configurable
entity that controls sensor signaling and collaboration in the enterprise
grid.
"Enterprise Resource Servers" - The Enterprise Resource Server (ERS) is an
Enterprise Location Server (ELS) that helps collect the list of resource
definitions from the various network computers and adds the same to an
Enterprise Resource Database. The Enterprise Resource Database model will be
that of a relational database with tables, stored procedures, and database
support to host information about mixed resources in an enterprise network.
"Location entities" - Location entities are the network computers in the
network that are installed with sensors. The Location entities are classified
as One-way or Two-way systems.
"Sensors" - Sensors are qualifying agents in the Enterprise Location System
that are placed on the Location entities classified as One-way or Two-way
systems. A Sensor qualifies a single Location entity for a resource query or
qualifies a set of Location entities for a resource query.
One-way systems One-way systems are Location entities running sensors; the
resources are tracked by queries sent from the network user or Administrator's
machine to the sensors. The network user does either configure the sensors to
be queried or relies on querying one sensor which conferences pools of
sensors.
When querying a sensor that conferences various related sensors, the network
user or Administrator does not expect to know which related sensors service
the request and respond. So the sensor-control is single or multi-purpose for
querying resources.
Two-way systems Two-way systems are unlike One-way systems, these sensors
are One-way systems and additionally connect into the network and play the
role of transmitting messages independently to the network user or
Administrator's machine. The Two- way sensors also enhance the location system
by forwarding or retrieving the information from other Location entities and
have some association in criticality or resource definitions.
-- K.S.Venkatram is a computer engineer from the University Of Poona.
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