Graphical Framework for Grid Interactive and Parallel Applications

Considering how complex Grid technology is, it is essential to provide adequate support on users' level in order to simplify interaction and attract users. Intuitive and easy-to-use graphical user interfaces could be critical for the usefulness of the whole infrastructure and may play a significant role within successful stories. We would like to present the int.eu.grid approach to a Migrating Desktop product providing a unified and intuitive graphical work environment that allows users to control sophisticated interactive services, access Grid resources, run sequential and parallel jobs -- using both batch and interactive paradigms. The Migrating Desktop provides a front-end for embedding some of the application mechanisms and interfaces, and it allows the user to have virtual access to Grid resources. Generic API for applications based on the OSGi specification provides mechanisms for the job submission phase, interaction with an application and remote visualization of the results which assemble the powerful platform for the Grid environment

The Interactive European Grid: Project Objectives and Achievements

The Interactive European Grid (i2g) project has set up an advanced e-Infrastructure in the European Research Area specifically oriented to support the friendly execution of demanding interactive applications. While interoperable with existing large e-Infrastructures like EGEE, i2g software supports execution of parallel applications in interactive mode including powerful visualization and application steering. This article describes the strategy followed, the key technical achievements, examples of applications that benefit from this infrastructure and the sustainable model proposed for the future

Fusion Plasma simulation in the Interactive Grid

Within the framework of the int.eu.grid project, IVISDEP, which stands for Interactive Visualizer of an Integrator of Stochastic Differential Equations for Plasmas, has been successfully ported and executed. It is an example of integration of many of the innovative features that this grid infrastructure offers. The application itself simulates and visualizes the evolution of the plasma inside a stellarator fusion device. The followed approach implies the simulation of a great number of trajectories of particles, whose positions are calculated among a large number of nodes in the Grid. The graphical interface allows the user to see and modify the physical and computational parameters of the simulation interactively, making this application a valuable tool for researchers in plasma physics

Web Interface for Generic Grid Jobs, Web4Grid

For a long time grid has been used practically only by large projects which can afford to have fine-tuned sophisticated interfaces for the researchers involved on these projects. Grid has the potential to be a key instrument for a wide variety of scientific topics which require to perform many calculations, for example to explore complex system dynamics as function of parameters. The reduced size of the research groups and the diversity of problems makes unsuitable to develop specific interfaces in most of the instances while the cumbersome grid shell commands are a barrier that requires a significant amount of determination to overcome. Web4Grid interface is intended to be a user-friendly web where grid users can submit their jobs and recover the results on an automatic way. Besides the interface provides the capability to monitor the existing jobs and to check the (local) grid status (load, number of free cores available, ...). Web4Grid interface does not require specific grid usage training nor any knowledge about the middleware behind it

Leveraging Interactivity and MPI for Environmental Applications

This paper describes two different approaches to exploiting interactivity and MPI support available in the Interactive European Grid project.The first application is an air pollution simulation using Lagrangian trajectory model to simulate the spread of pollutant particles released into the atmosphere. The performance of the sequential implementation of the application was not satisfactory, therefore a parallelization was planned. The MPI programming model was used because of some previous experience with it and its support in the grid infrastructure to be used. Then the interactivity enabling the user to receive visualizations of simulation steps and to exercise control over the application running in the grid was added. The user interface for interacting with the application was implemented as a plug-in into the Migrating Desktop user interface client platform. The other application is an interactive workflow management system, which is a modification of a previously developed system for management of applications composed of web and grid services. It allows users to manage more complex jobs, composed of several program executions, in an interactive and comfortable manner. The system uses the interactive channel of the project to forward commands from a GUI to the on-site workflow manager, and to control the job during execution. This tool is able to visualize the inner workflow of the application. User has complete in-execution control over the job, can see its partial results, and can even alter it while it is running. This allows not only to accommodate the job workflow to the data it produces, extend or shorten it, but also to interactively debug and tune the job

A Grid Infrastructure for Parallel and Interactive Applications

The int.eu.grid project aims at providing a production quality grid computing infrastructure for e-Science supporting parallel and interactive applications. The infrastructure capacity is presently about 750 cpu cores distributed over twelve sites in seven countries. These resources have to be tightly coordinated to match the requirements of parallel computing. Such an infrastructure implies high availability, performance and robustness resulting in a much larger management effort than in traditional grid environments which are usually targeted to run sequential non-interactive applications. To achieve these goals the int.eu.grid project offers advanced brokering mechanisms and user friendly graphical interfaces supporting application steering. The int.eu.grid environment is deployed on top of the gLite middleware enabling full interoperability with existing gLite based infrastructures

Распределенная информационная система моделирования чрезвычайных ситуаций в грид на примере лесных пожаров в АР Крым

Рассмотрены методы, связанные с моделированием лесных пожаров в АР Крым с использованием грид-среды при помощи распределенной вычислительной системы моделирования чрезвычайных ситуаций. Описаны ее особенности, архитектура, а также веб-интерфейс пользователя. Получен комплекс альтернативных моделей прогнозирования пожаров, предложены процедуры адаптивной организации вычислительного эксперимента в среде грид.Розглянуто методи, пов'язані з організацією моделювання лісових пожеж в АР Крим з використанням грід-середовища за допомогою розподіленої обчислювальної системи моделювання надзвичайних ситуацій. Наведено опис її особливостей, архітектури, а також веб-інтерфейсу користувача. Одержано комплекс альтернативних моделей прогнозування пожеж, запропоновано процедури адаптивної організації обчислювального експерименту в середовищі грід.The purpose of this article is to examine the methods of modeling of forest fires in the ARC based on the Grid environment, a distributed computing system for simulation of emergency situations, the description of its features and architecture as well as Web-based user interface. The model runs with the distributed simulation emergency system. This article describes the architecture and the interface of this system. The article lists the current approaches and their main problems to the assessment of fire risk. As the result, there was created threedimensional model of forest area on fire. The Basic result is an information Grid system for emergency modeling: The Case of forest fires in the ARC, equipped with convenient and versatile web interface for the Grid environment. Based on the results of this research, there was created an information system modeling emergencies in Grid

Web interface for generic grid jobs, Web4Grid

For a long time grid has been used practically only by large projects which can afford to have fine-tuned sophisticated interfaces for the researchers involved on these projects. Grid has the potential to be a key instrument for a wide variety of scientific topics which require to perform many calculations, for example to explore complex system dynamics as function of parameters. The reduced size of the research groups and the diversity of problems makes unsuitable to develop specific interfaces in most of the instances while the cumbersome grid shell commands are a barrier that requires a significant amount of determination to overcome. Web4Grid interface is intended to be a user-friendly web where grid users can submit their jobs and recover the results on an automatic way. Besides the interface provides the capability to monitor the existing jobs and to check the (local) grid status (load, number of free cores available,...). Web4Grid interface does not require specific grid usage training nor any knowledge about the middleware behind it.Financial support from CSIC through project GRID-CSIC (Ref . 200450E494) and from from MICINN (Spain) and FEDER (EU) through project FIS2 007-60327 (FISICOS) is acknowledged.Peer Reviewe