The Anatomy of the Grid - Enabling Scalable Virtual Organizations

"Grid" computing has emerged as an important new field, distinguished from conventional distributed computing by its focus on large-scale resource sharing, innovative applications, and, in some cases, high-performance orientation. In this article, we define this new field. First, we review the "Grid problem," which we define as flexible, secure, coordinated resource sharing among dynamic collections of individuals, institutions, and resources-what we refer to as virtual organizations. In such settings, we encounter unique authentication, authorization, resource access, resource discovery, and other challenges. It is this class of problem that is addressed by Grid technologies. Next, we present an extensible and open Grid architecture, in which protocols, services, application programming interfaces, and software development kits are categorized according to their roles in enabling resource sharing. We describe requirements that we believe any such mechanisms must satisfy, and we discuss the central role played by the intergrid protocols that enable interoperability among different Grid systems. Finally, we discuss how Grid technologies relate to other contemporary technologies, including enterprise integration, application service provider, storage service provider, and peer-to-peer computing. We maintain that Grid concepts and technologies complement and have much to contribute to these other approaches.Comment: 24 pages, 5 figure

Technologies for Ubiquitous Supercomputing: A Java Interface to the Nexus Communication system

We use the term ubiquitous supercomputing to refer to systems that integrate low- and mid-range computing systems, advanced networks and remote high-end computers with the goal of enhancing the computational power accessible from local environments. Such systems promise to enable new applications in areas as diverse as smart instruments and collaborative environments. However, they also demand tools for transporting code between computers and for establishing flexible, dynamic communication structures. In this article, we propose that these requirements be satisfied by introducing Java classes that implement the global pointer and remote service request mechanisms defined by a communication library called Nexus. Java supports transportable code; Nexus provides communication support and represents the core communication framework for Globus, a project building infrastructure for ubiquitous supercomputing. We explain how this NexusJava library is implemented and illustrate its use with examples

Security for Grid Services

Grid computing is concerned with the sharing and coordinated use of diverse resources in distributed "virtual organizations." The dynamic and multi-institutional nature of these environments introduces challenging security issues that demand new technical approaches. In particular, one must deal with diverse local mechanisms, support dynamic creation of services, and enable dynamic creation of trust domains. We describe how these issues are addressed in two generations of the Globus Toolkit. First, we review the Globus Toolkit version 2 (GT2) approach; then, we describe new approaches developed to support the Globus Toolkit version 3 (GT3) implementation of the Open Grid Services Architecture, an initiative that is recasting Grid concepts within a service oriented framework based on Web services. GT3's security implementation uses Web services security mechanisms for credential exchange and other purposes, and introduces a tight least-privilege model that avoids the need for any privileged network service.Comment: 10 pages; 4 figure

Campus Bridging Use Case Quality Attribute Scenarios

This document is both a user-­facing document (publicly accessible) and an internal working document intended to define quality attributes associated with user needs and use cases that fall under the general umbrella of Campus Bridging within the overall activities of XSEDE.XSEDE is supported by National Science Foundation Grant 1053575 (XSEDE: eXtreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment)

Globus Data Publication as a Service: Lowering Barriers to Reproducible Science

Abstract-Broad access to the data on which scientific results are based is essential for verification, reproducibility, and extension. Scholarly publication has long been the means to this end. But as data volumes grow, new methods beyond traditional publications are needed for communicating, discovering, and accessing scientific data. We describe data publication capabilities within the Globus research data management service, which supports publication of large datasets, with customizable policies for different institutions and researchers; the ability to publish data directly from both locally owned storage and cloud storage; extensible metadata that can be customized to describe specific attributes of different research domains; flexible publication and curation workflows that can be easily tailored to meet institutional requirements; and public and restricted collections that give complete control over who may access published data. We describe the architecture and implementation of these new capabilities and review early results from pilot projects involving nine research communities that span a range of data sizes, data types, disciplines, and publication policies