8,656 research outputs found
Optimization and Management of Large-scale Scientific Workflows in Heterogeneous Network Environments: From Theory to Practice
Next-generation computation-intensive scientific applications feature large-scale computing workflows of various structures, which can be modeled as simple as linear pipelines or as complex as Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs). Supporting such computing workflows and optimizing their end-to-end network performance are crucial to the success of scientific collaborations that require fast system response, smooth data flow, and reliable distributed operation.We construct analytical cost models and formulate a class of workflow mapping problems with different mapping objectives and network constraints. The difficulty of these mapping problems essentially arises from the topological matching nature in the spatial domain, which is further compounded by the resource sharing complicacy in the temporal dimension. We provide detailed computational complexity analysis and design optimal or heuristic algorithms with rigorous correctness proof or performance analysis. We decentralize the proposed mapping algorithms and also investigate these optimization problems in unreliable network environments for fault tolerance.To examine and evaluate the performance of the workflow mapping algorithms before actual deployment and implementation, we implement a simulation program that simulates the execution dynamics of distributed computing workflows. We also develop a scientific workflow automation and management platform based on an existing workflow engine for experimentations in real environments. The performance superiority of the proposed mapping solutions are illustrated by extensive simulation-based comparisons with existing algorithms and further verified by large-scale experiments on real-life scientific workflow applications through effective system implementation and deployment in real networks
HPC Cloud for Scientific and Business Applications: Taxonomy, Vision, and Research Challenges
High Performance Computing (HPC) clouds are becoming an alternative to
on-premise clusters for executing scientific applications and business
analytics services. Most research efforts in HPC cloud aim to understand the
cost-benefit of moving resource-intensive applications from on-premise
environments to public cloud platforms. Industry trends show hybrid
environments are the natural path to get the best of the on-premise and cloud
resources---steady (and sensitive) workloads can run on on-premise resources
and peak demand can leverage remote resources in a pay-as-you-go manner.
Nevertheless, there are plenty of questions to be answered in HPC cloud, which
range from how to extract the best performance of an unknown underlying
platform to what services are essential to make its usage easier. Moreover, the
discussion on the right pricing and contractual models to fit small and large
users is relevant for the sustainability of HPC clouds. This paper brings a
survey and taxonomy of efforts in HPC cloud and a vision on what we believe is
ahead of us, including a set of research challenges that, once tackled, can
help advance businesses and scientific discoveries. This becomes particularly
relevant due to the fast increasing wave of new HPC applications coming from
big data and artificial intelligence.Comment: 29 pages, 5 figures, Published in ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR
Workflow Partitioning and Deployment on the Cloud using Orchestra
Orchestrating service-oriented workflows is typically based on a design model
that routes both data and control through a single point - the centralised
workflow engine. This causes scalability problems that include the unnecessary
consumption of the network bandwidth, high latency in transmitting data between
the services, and performance bottlenecks. These problems are highly prominent
when orchestrating workflows that are composed from services dispersed across
distant geographical locations. This paper presents a novel workflow
partitioning approach, which attempts to improve the scalability of
orchestrating large-scale workflows. It permits the workflow computation to be
moved towards the services providing the data in order to garner optimal
performance results. This is achieved by decomposing the workflow into smaller
sub workflows for parallel execution, and determining the most appropriate
network locations to which these sub workflows are transmitted and subsequently
executed. This paper demonstrates the efficiency of our approach using a set of
experimental workflows that are orchestrated over Amazon EC2 and across several
geographic network regions.Comment: To appear in Proceedings of the IEEE/ACM 7th International Conference
on Utility and Cloud Computing (UCC 2014
SciTokens: Capability-Based Secure Access to Remote Scientific Data
The management of security credentials (e.g., passwords, secret keys) for
computational science workflows is a burden for scientists and information
security officers. Problems with credentials (e.g., expiration, privilege
mismatch) cause workflows to fail to fetch needed input data or store valuable
scientific results, distracting scientists from their research by requiring
them to diagnose the problems, re-run their computations, and wait longer for
their results. In this paper, we introduce SciTokens, open source software to
help scientists manage their security credentials more reliably and securely.
We describe the SciTokens system architecture, design, and implementation
addressing use cases from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave
Observatory (LIGO) Scientific Collaboration and the Large Synoptic Survey
Telescope (LSST) projects. We also present our integration with widely-used
software that supports distributed scientific computing, including HTCondor,
CVMFS, and XrootD. SciTokens uses IETF-standard OAuth tokens for
capability-based secure access to remote scientific data. The access tokens
convey the specific authorizations needed by the workflows, rather than
general-purpose authentication impersonation credentials, to address the risks
of scientific workflows running on distributed infrastructure including NSF
resources (e.g., LIGO Data Grid, Open Science Grid, XSEDE) and public clouds
(e.g., Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure). By improving the
interoperability and security of scientific workflows, SciTokens 1) enables use
of distributed computing for scientific domains that require greater data
protection and 2) enables use of more widely distributed computing resources by
reducing the risk of credential abuse on remote systems.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, PEARC '18: Practice and Experience in Advanced
Research Computing, July 22--26, 2018, Pittsburgh, PA, US
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