Special Features:
GRID PROGRESS, CHALLENGES DISCUSSED AT INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP
A group of leading experts in the fields of Grid computing, data and
networking services from various centers operating large enterprise, regional,
statewide or countrywide Grid infrastructures gathered last month to share
their experiences and discuss the successes and challenges of delivering
emerging Grid services at an early stage of the technology's evolution.
The International Grid Services Workshop, held Oct. 21-22 with representatives
from 15 organizations providing Grid services, was organized and hosted by
MCNC Grid Computing & Networking Services.
"We are all dedicated and passionate about advancing Grid computing, but there
are both exciting and hard lessons to be learned on the leading edge of the
evolution of any emerging technology," said Wolfgang Gentzsch, managing
director of MCNC Grid Computing & Networking Services. "This workshop was not
the typical environment of simply showcasing results. We talked about the
successes and struggles behind the scenes."
Participants agreed to produce a white paper early next year from the
discussions to share their findings with the global Grid community. In
addition, the group will continue collaboration on Grid-related topics at
future meetings to discuss organizational, administrative, technology,
application, educational, economic and social issues of Grid computing.
Following introductory presentations, the participants held open discussion
sessions that included:
- Grid Building Blocks: Examined the Grid "building blocks" that are
available today and working. Conclusions included that most participants are
using:
- Globus 2.4, Avaki, UNICORE, or Web Services for global computing
and data Grids.
- X.509 certificates and MyProxy for authentication.
- LSF, PBS, LoadLeveler and Sun Grid Engine as the local distributed
resource managers
- Their own custom-developed portals with technologies underneath
including Apache, WebSphere and JES.
- Creating Awareness: Examined how to create awareness and demand for Grid
computing and Grid services. Conclusions included:
- Avoid the "hype" generated by any emerging technology. Instead,
customer and partner relationships should be built on realistic
benefits that Grid technology can deliver today and in the near
future.
- Focus on the benefits -- not the underlying Grid technology that
enables the benefits.
- Promote success stories through case studies featuring best
practices. Promote and implement components of Grid Technology that
are working well.
- Tie Grid computing to fundamental distributed computing principles
and concepts -- must link to fundamental computing for credibility.
- Successful Business Models and Funding: Examined various business models --
what works and what didn't work, and financial strategies for developing and
deploying Grid services. The discussion included various models for selling
network bandwidth, data storage and compute cycles; video conferencing and
access Grid; offering services to build, operate and manage a Grid; acquiring
middleware and application development projects; providing distance learning
with access to resources; attracting government funding; and private funds to
foster economic growth.
-
Barriers to Adoption: Examined the common barriers, both technical and
non-technical, to offering Grid services and how those barriers could be
overcome.
Technical barriers include:
- The technology is far from mature and complete, consisting
primarily of prototypes that are not yet ready for production-level
services.
- Many of the standards are still under development -- Grid services
are far from "plug and play."
- Because of these challenges, Grids are still very complex to
develop and operate.
Non-technical barriers include:
- The concept of Grid services and benefits it can deliver are not
widely and fully understood by many potential users.
- Information technology professionals and users have a strong sense
of ownership of their resources. There is a reluctance to share
resources.
- There is a need for more Grid education and training to produce a
workforce with Grid skills. Traditional computer science programs will
not meet the need of developing qualified Grid computing
technologists/researchers. More must be done in providing the core
concepts in a deliberate undergraduate and graduate program to develop
the necessary skills and experience.
- Issues related to security, privacy and protection of intellectual
property need to be more fully addressed for widespread use of Grid
services.
- New models for software licensing are needed for Grid service
environments.
The Grid services providers were joined by representatives from IBM and Sun
Microsystems for a critical perspective from vendors, and representatives from
Boeing and T-Systems for a perspective from commercial Grid users. The Grid
services providers participating in the workshop were:
CoGrid (Colorado Grid Initiative), United States
The COGrid seeks to integrate a wide range of Colorado's independent computing
resources into a general application network capable of supporting a
correspondingly broad group of users. coGrid.colostate.edu/ Grid-Ireland, Ireland
In Ireland, the universities and other institutions of advanced education and
research are represented in Government by the Higher Education Authority
(HEA), and computing systems at these institutions are interconnected by the
HEAnet. Grid-Ireland is a managed layer above HEAnet that provides Grid
services. www.Grid-ireland.com Grid Technology Research Center, AIST, Japan
The GTRC is part of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and
Technology (AIST). The primary mission of the GTRC is to lead the
collaboration among industrial, academic and government sectors and to serve
as the R&D center of Grid technology in the world.
www.gtrc.aist.go.jp/en/ HPCVL, High Performance Computing Virtual Laboratory, Canada
HPCVL is dedicated to providing a secure HPC environment for innovative
researchers at participating institutions and from elsewhere in Canada. HPCVL
is centered at Carleton University, Queen's University at Kingston, the Royal
Military College of Canada, the University of Ottawa, and Ryerson University
and provides resources to researchers from across Canada.
www.hpcvl.org/ IT Innovation, United Kingdom
IT Innovation is an applied research center focused on enabling the innovative
application of information technology by industry and commerce. IT Innovation
is part of the School of Engineering and Computer Science at the University of
Southampton. www.it-innovation.soton.ac.uk MCNC Grid Computing & Networking Services
The non-profit MCNC developed the North Carolina Research & Education Network
(NCREN) to deliver Internet, video, audio, data and computing services to
education, research and government. In partnership with North Carolina's
universities, MCNC is building one of the nation's first statewide Grid
computing networks. http://www.mcnc.org National Research Council of Canada Canadian Bioinformatics Resource
(NRC-CBR), Canada
NRC-CBR provides the research community with convenient high-powered access to
widely-used bioinformatics tools and databases. NRC-CBR in its capacity and
expertise provides comprehensive support and training, collaborative
development of databases and associated web services, customized support of
computational biology systems, and development of high throughput
bioinformatics tools. cbr-rbc.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca Ohio Supercomputing Center, United States
OSC is Ohio's high performance computing and networking center. Established in
1987 by the Ohio Board of Regents, the Center provides computing, networking,
educational outreach, and information technology resources to state and
national high performance computing and networking groups. www.osc.edu Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center, Poland
Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center provides a high-performance and
networking services to researchers, government and education in Poland. PSNC
is the operator of the national optical network called PIONIER. PSNC will
shortly provide Grid services based on developments from projects such as
GridLab and Progress. www.man.poznan.pl T-Systems, Germany
T-Systems is a joint venture between T-Systems International, a division of
Deutsche Telekom AG, and DLR, the German Centre for Aerospace Research. It has
a focus on services for industrial and public research and development, mainly
in technical computing. www.t-systems.com White Rose Grid, United Kingdom
The White Rose Grid provides a high-performance computing service for
researchers. It is a collaborative project between the three White Rose
Universities of Leeds, York and Sheffield and manages a portfolio of
collaborative projects within the regional universities and their industrial
partners. www.wrGrid.org.uk ZAM, Central Institute for Applied Mathematics, Germany
The Central Institute for Applied Mathematics (ZAM) combines research,
development and support in high performance computing, computational science
and Grid computing. It provides IT tools, methods and know-how for the
Research Centre Jülich and nationwide for the John von Neumann Institute for
Computing. www.fz-juelich.de/zam/en
GRIDtoday is a media sponsor of the conference.
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