GridCertLib: a Single Sign-on Solution for Grid Web Applications and Portals

This paper describes the design and implementation of GridCertLib, a Java library leveraging a Shibboleth-based authentication infrastructure and the SLCS online certificate signing service, to provide short-lived X.509 certificates and Grid proxies. The main use case envisioned for GridCertLib, is to provide seamless and secure access to Grid/X.509 certificates and proxies in web applications and portals: when a user logs in to the portal using Shibboleth authentication, GridCertLib can automatically obtain a Grid/X.509 certificate from the SLCS service and generate a VOMS proxy from it. We give an overview of the architecture of GridCertLib and briefly describe its programming model. Its application to some deployment scenarios is outlined, as well as a report on practical experience integrating GridCertLib into portals for Bioinformatics and Computational Chemistry applications, based on the popular P-GRADE and Django softwares.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figure; final manuscript accepted for publication by the "Journal of Grid Computing

Self-organising management of Grid environments

This paper presents basic concepts, architectural principles and algorithms for efficient resource and security management in cluster computing environments and the Grid. The work presented in this paper is funded by BTExacT and the EPSRC project SO-GRM (GR/S21939)

Enabling On-Demand Database Computing with MIT SuperCloud Database Management System

The MIT SuperCloud database management system allows for rapid creation and flexible execution of a variety of the latest scientific databases, including Apache Accumulo and SciDB. It is designed to permit these databases to run on a High Performance Computing Cluster (HPCC) platform as seamlessly as any other HPCC job. It ensures the seamless migration of the databases to the resources assigned by the HPCC scheduler and centralized storage of the database files when not running. It also permits snapshotting of databases to allow researchers to experiment and push the limits of the technology without concerns for data or productivity loss if the database becomes unstable.Comment: 6 pages; accepted to IEEE High Performance Extreme Computing (HPEC) conference 2015. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1406.492