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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY /
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Special Features:
eBusiness HELPS DRIVE StorageTek
GRID MOVE
By Derrick Harris, Editor
Here is the interview GRIDtoday conducted with Rajkumar Buyya of the
University of Melbourne, and recent recipient of the StorageTek Fellowship of
Grid Computing; comments from Charles Milligan, StorageTek fellow, follow.
GRIDtoday: I must say, my interest was piqued when I heard
of
this story -- what does a storage company want with Grid computing? Will
StorageTek focus on Grid storage, or are they looking to expand into the
development of Grid applications?
RAJKUMAR BUYYA: The next generation of scientific
experiments
and studies, popularly called as e-Science, is carried out by communities of
researchers from different organizations that span national and international
boundaries. Some well-known scientific experiments of this nature include the
CERN-led ATLAS and CMS experiments and the KEK-led Belle experiment. These
experiments involve geographically distributed and heterogeneous resources
such as computational resources, scientific instruments, databases and
applications. The data in these experiments is usually massive and distributed
across numerous institutions for various reasons including, the inherent
distribution of data sources; large-scale storage and computational
requirements; to ensure high-availability and fault-tolerance of data; and
caching to provide faster access. The users in such complex environments
should able to carry out analysis of the data generated by the experiments by
transparently accessing distributed datasets and computational resources.
Building, managing, and operating such distributed data-intensive Grids as
a
utility computing environment for both eScience and eBusiness applications is
not only challenging, but also presents a large business opportunity for
industries. I believe that this is what triggered StorageTek, a leading
company with products in mass storage systems, to look into Grid computing.
Gt: Alright, now on to the discussion of money, and $125,000
is a lot of it. Does StorageTek expect that you meet any specific
requirements?
BUYYA: The collaboration between StorageTek and the
Gridbus
Project has emerged out of our complementary interests and expertise in
various aspects of Grid computing, one of which is the development of Grid
economy ecosystem for autonomic management of distributed data and storage
systems. Therefore, some of our research efforts are being scaled up toward
meeting industrial requirements.
Gt: Speaking of Gridbus, how do you think your receiving the
this fellowship will affect the work done with and the image of the Gridbus
Project, and of the University of Melbourne as a whole?
BUYYA: Our collaboration with StorageTek provides an
opportunity for members of the GRIDS Laboratory and its flagship Gridbus
Project to work with the world's leading minds in mass storage systems. It
enhances and scales up our research efforts to develop innovative Grid
technologies that are designed to meet real world requirements. It also gives
me a bit of extra time to dream up about the creation of disruptive Internet
and Grid technologies and applications.
Receiving a StorageTek Fellowship award supporting a position at a rank
equivalent to an industry-sponsored Chair of Grid Computing in a U.S.
university is a great honor and recognition for both the Gridbus Project and
the University of Melbourne. At the international level, one can easily view
this as strengthening Australia's position as a leading destination for those
in search of a place for research and innovation, and not just for
holidays!
Gt: How is everything going with Gridbus?
BUYYA: The Gridbus Project has been doing very well in
many
respects. To name just a few: 1) our collaboration with international
industries and developers of eScience and eBusiness applications is rapidly
growing; 2) we continue to attract top class research scholars and Ph.D.
candidates from all over the world; and 3) this year alone we have received
two Discovery Project grants from the Australian Research Council.
Gt: You mentioned eBusiness, do you foresee Grid playing a
major role in the business world in the near future? Do you think your work
with StorageTek will directly affect Grid's adoption in the enterprise?
BUYYA: At this moment, Grid computing holds great promise
in
research and scientific world. Although there are several deployments of
enterprise Grid systems such as Oracle10g and Sun Grid Engine, a significant
amount of research, development and innovation is required for global Grids to
play a major role in the business world as utility computing platforms. Our
collaborative effort with StorageTek and many other international industrial
and academic organizations will certainly enhance further adoption of Grid
computing in enterprises.
Gt: Well, thanks for the time, and I just want ask if you
have anything else to add. Feel free to do so.
BUYYA: In addition to our Grid efforts, the research work
of
fellow
researchers from all over the world, just to name a few: 1) professor David
Abramson from Monash University, Australia (who was my Ph.D. thesis advisor);
2) professors Jack Dongarra and Ian Foster from the United States; 3)
professors David Walker and Mark Baker from the United Kingdom; and 4)
professor Satoshi Matsuoka from Japan, who is playing a major role in
enhancing the widespread adoption of Grid computing.
GRIDtoday also was able to speak to StorageTek Fellow Charles Milligan
about
what inspired the StorageTek Fellowship of Grid Computing, and what factors
led to the decision to award the position to Buyya. Here is what he had to
say:
CHARLES MILLIGAN: We had a number of goals last fall with
respect to our Grid research efforts. We found several opportunities to
address each of the following goals at various costs and at varying levels of
creativity. The goals included:
- Identify exactly what can (if anything) must be done to basic
StorageTek
products for them to be "Grid-enabled."
- Coordinate our Grid research here with at least one university
effort.
- Extend our research reach by engaging a group of external researchers
and
graduate students to complement some aspect of our research.
- Link our Grid effort with at least one international entity.
The position we sponsored at the University of Melbourne was ideal in that
it
addressed the last three goals. The intent is that we sponsor Dr. Buyya's
position to enhance some of his research efforts particularly those addressing
problems of interest to StorageTek. We selected Dr. Buyya primarily because:
his research includes economic aspects of Grid management that we have not
found elsewhere; he has entered his work in international Grid competitions
and been in the top finishers; and he has developed Grid technologies and
demonstrated their use in driving emerging eScience and eBusiness
applications.
We identified the position as a StorageTek sponsored Chair at the
university.
However, the university pointed out that a "Chair" position is a department
head (like a vice president position) and Dr. Buyya was more like a first line
manager position, which the university calls a "Fellow." So, they selected the
title of "Fellow of Grid Computing" and then tacked "StorageTek" on the front
to acknowledge our contribution to the university. This is in no way related
to the "StorageTek Fellow" position within StorageTek. This may be a one year
sponsorship or ongoing -- that really depends on the value that StorageTek get
out of the work this year. That is a decision that will be made in Q4 after we
see the results.
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