A Distributed Computing Center Software for the Efficient Use of Parallel Computer Systems

. Nowadays, Computing systems accessible to researchers with "Grand Challenge" problems consist of a hardware mixture ranging from clusters of workstations to parallel supercomputers. This hardware is available via geographically distributed networks with various communication capabilities. Within this paper the Computing Center Software (CCS) is introduced. This software package is implemented as a message based distributed application by itself. Thus, it is considerable simplified to integrate new MPP systems into an existing environment. Giving the same look and feel when accessing different types of parallel or distributed computer systems will bring the idea of metacomputing close to practice. This paper takes a look behind CCS. The underlying model which uses abstract views for specifying system components and a general purpose Resource Description Language is sketched. We explain how it is possible to support Wide-Area Network access and unstable connection lines. Afterwards, we..

The MOL Project: An Open, Extensible Metacomputer

Distributed high-performance computing---so-called metacomputing---refers to the coordinated use of a pool of geographically distributed high-performance computers. The user's view of an ideal metacomputer is that of a powerful monolithic virtual machine. The implementor 's view, on the other hand, is that of a variety of interacting services implemented in a scalable and extensible manner. In this paper, we present MOL, the Metacomputer Online environment. In contrast to other metcomputing environments, MOL is not based on specific programming models or tools. It has rather been designed as an open, extensible software system comprising a variety of software modules, each of them specialized in serving one specific task such as resource scheduling, job control, task communication, task migration, user interface, and much more. All of these modules exist and are working. The main challenge in the design of MOL lies in the specification of suitable, generic interfaces for the effective ..

The Computing Center Software A Step Towards Metacomputing

Computing resources which are transparently available to the user via networked environments are often seen as a metacomputer. In this sense, a metacomputer is a network of heterogeneous, computational resources linked by software in such a way that they can be used as easily as a single computational unit. During the last years our work has concentrated on developing methods and tools to provide a transparent and vendor independent hardware management system to the users, giving the same look and feel when accessing different types of parallel and distributed computer systems. Solving the hardware management problem up to a high logical level will bring the idea of metacomputing a large step to practice. This paper describes the main components of the Computing Center Software, its central design goals and how they are matched. The object oriented approach of CCS, implemented as a message based distributed application by itself, has proved to be a flexible method to face the challenge..