SZTAKI desktop grid: building a scalable, secure platform for desktop grid computing

In this paper we present a concept how separate desktop grids can be used as building blocks for larger scale grids by organizing them in a hierarchical tree. We describe an enhanced security model which satisfies the requirements of the hierarchical setup and is aimed for real-world deployment

SZTAKI desktop grid: a modular and scalable way of building large computing grids

So far BOINC based desktop grid systems have been applied at the global computing level. This paper describes an extended version of BOINC called SZTAKI desktop grid (SZDG) that aims at using desktop grids (DGs) at local (enterprise/institution) level. The novelty of SZDG is that it enables the hierarchical organisation of local DGs, i.e., clients of a DG can be DGs at a lower level that can take work units from their higher level DG server. More than that, even clusters can be connected at the client level and hence work units can contain complete MPI programs to be run on the client clusters. In order to easily create master/worker type DG applications a new API, called as the DC-API has been developed. SZDG and DC-API has been successfully applied both at the global and local level, both in academic institutions and in companies to solve problems requiring large computing power

EDGeS: a bridge between desktop grids and service grids

Desktop grids and service grids widely used by their different users communities as efficient solutions for making full use of computing power and achieving loads balances across Intranet or Internet. Nevertheless,little work has been done to combine these two grids technologies together to establish a seamless and vast grid resources pool. In this paper we will present a new European FP7 infrastructure project:EDGeS (enabling desktop grids for e-science), which aim to build technological bridges to facilitate interoperability between desktop grid and service grid. We give also a taxonomy of existing grid systems: desktop grids such as BONIC and XtremWeb, service grids such as EGEE. Then we describe furtherly our solution for identifying translation technologies for porting applications between desktop grids and service grids, and vice versa. There are three themes in our solution, which discuss actual popular bridging technologies, user access issues, and distributed data issues about deployment and application development

MGMT methylation analysis of glioblastoma on the Infinium methylation BeadChip identifies two distinct CpG regions associated with gene silencing and outcome, yielding a prediction model for comparisons across datasets, tumor grades, and CIMP-status

The methylation status of the O6-methylguanine- DNA methyltransferase (MGMT) gene is an important predictive biomarker for benefit from alkylating agent therapy in glioblastoma. Recent studies in anaplastic glioma suggest a prognostic value for MGMT methylation. Investigation of pathogenetic and epigenetic features of this intriguingly distinct behavior requires accurate MGMT classification to assess high throughput molecular databases. Promoter methylation-mediated gene silencing is strongly dependent on the location of the methylated CpGs,

Workers in the clouds

This paper introduces the existing connectivity and interoperability issues of Clouds, Grids and Clusters, and provides solutions to overcome these issues. The paper proposes several possible solution variants how to pool Cloud resources for executing bag of tasks type jobs. It presents two implementations based on BOINC and Condor. It details performance measurement results obtained by executing parameter study type applications using the two implementations

Towards a volunteer cloud system

The paper completes the work started in the EU FP7 EDGI project for extending service grids with volunteer (global) and institutional (local) desktop grids. The Generic BOINC Application Client (GBAC) concept described in the paper enables the transparent and automatic forwarding of parameter sweep application (parametric) jobs from service grid VOs (Virtual Organizations) into connected desktop grids without any porting effort. GBAC that introduces virtualization for the volunteer BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) clients can also be considered as a first step towards establishing volunteer cloud systems since it provides solutions for several problems of creating such a volunteer cloud system

GenWrapper: A generic wrapper for running legacy applications on desktop grids

Desktop grids represent an alternative trend in grid computing using the same software infrastructure as volunteer computing projects, such as BOINC. Applications to be deployed on a BOINC infrastructure need special preparations. However, there are many legacy applications, that have either no source code available or would require too much effort to port. For these applications BOINC provides a wrapper. This wrapper can handle the simple cases and it is configurable, but it can only be used to execute a list of legacy executables (tasks) one after the other. GenWrapper aims to provide a generic solution for wrapping and executing an arbitrary set of legacy applications by utilizing a POSIX like shell scripting environment to describe how the application is to be run and how the work unit should be processed. This is realized by an extended version of BusyBox providing the most common UNIX commands and a POSIX shell interpreter in a single executable with a special applet (BusyBox extension) to make BOINC API functions accessible from the shell on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X platforms. In this paper we present how GenWrapper works and how it can be used to port legacy applications to desktop grid systems

Job scheduling in hierarchical desktop grids

Desktop grid is a relatively new trend in grid computing. As opposed to traditional (service based) grid systems, desktop grids are based on volunteer computing: users can volunteer their computers’ free CPU cycles to solve some kind of CPU-intensive problem. Creating a desktop grid project requires the installation of a single server and some enthusiast users to join the project by installing a simple client that downloads work from the server and uploads results after processing. MTA SZTAKI has created the hierarchical desktop grid concept, where not only single computers but also desktop grids can join another system increasing its performance significantly. In this chapter we describe scheduling issues that arise when considering hierarchical desktop grid systems and present some scheduling algorithms that can be used in such systems

FCM: an architecture for integrating IaaS cloud systems

Cloud Computing builds on the latest achievements of diverse research areas, such as Grid Computing, Service-oriented computing, business processes and virtualization. In this paper, we reveal open research issues by envisaging a federated cloud that aggregates capabilities of various IaaS cloud providers. We propose a Federated Cloud Management architecture that acts as an entry point to cloud federations and incorporates the concepts of metabrokering, cloud brokering and on-demand service deployment. The meta-brokering component provides transparent service execution for the users by allowing the system to interconnect the various cloud broker solutions available in the system. Cloud brokers manage the number and the location of the utilized virtual machines for the received service requests. In order to fast track the virtual machine instantiation, our architecture uses the automatic service deployment component that is capable of optimizing service delivery by encapsulating services as virtual appliances in order to allow their decomposition and replication among the various IaaS cloud infrastructures. Our solution is able to cope with highly dynamic service executions by federating heterogeneous cloud infrastructures in a transparent and autonomous manner

SZTAKI desktop grid: adapting clusters for desktop grids

Although clusters usually represent a single large resource for grid computing, most of the time they are utilized as individual resources for desktop grids. This chapter presents a lightweight, fault-tolerant approach for connecting firewalled already deployed clusters for desktop grid computing. It allows to easily offer cluster resources for desktop grids without requiring a large administrative overhead of connecting them separately. Our approach uses Condor for cluster management and an extended version of BOINC to connect those resources across the Internet or wide area networks. We describe security considerations and present our security model for the system and sharing resources. We present running projects where our solution is being used to utilize already deployed clusters requiring low effort from administrators