Current status of grids: the need for standards

1. Current status of grids: the need for standards Mike Mineter m.mineter@ed.ac.uk TOE-NeSC, Edinburgh

2. Outline • Effect of the grid islands • Bridging grid islands • What OMII-Europe is Doing

3. Revision • Grid supports “virtual computing across administrative domains” • EGEE and most grids have Virtual Organisation concept • A VO is a collaboration • Shares resources • Express membership of VO, its groups and roles in some way as a basis for grid services to authorise users’ requests

4. Grid Islands Isolate: Data Computers Expertise CROWN UNICORE gLite Globus Toolkit 4

5. Effect of grid islands • A VO can only use resources that share the same Authorisation/Authentication basis • Can’t span UNICORE and EGEE grids for example • EGEE – EU-funded grid infrastructure promoting collaborative research by sharing access to data and clusters, gLite with VOMS (Virtual Organisation Membership Service) • DEISA – grid spanning HPC resources, built on UNICORE middleware • Applications must be written for specific grid • Disincentive for tool / high level service developers • Need standards that all grids accept… and are complete! • “Complete” = if standards are supported, then services are interoperable

6. Bridges – to enable… “The global grid” VO to span gridsApplication portability CROWN UNICORE gLite Globus Toolkit 4

7. Bridges – for interoperability Job execution Data access and integration Accounting Info Services AuthN, AuthZ … CROWN UNICORE gLite Globus Toolkit 4

8. Approaches to Interoperability • Adapters-based: • The ability of Grid middleware to interact via adapters that translate the specific design aspects from one domain to another • Standard-based: • the native ability of Grid middleware to interact directly via well-defined interfaces and common open standards * definition inspired by OGF GIN CG

9. Who Benefits from Interoperability? • Grid Developers • A single standard set of services on all Grid middleware systems • Applications portable across different Grid middleware systems • E-Science application users • Common ways for accessing any e-infrastructure resources • Potential access to a significantly larger set of resources • E-resource owners • Reduced management overheads as only a single Grid middleware system needs deployment • Potential for greater resource utilisation “For the Grid to deliver on it’s promises interoperability needs to be taken for granted like network interoperability”

10. How to achieve interoperability? • Application level • SAGA – support same API on all grids • Interoperability or simply easier, portable applications? • Need • Conform to standards • BUT standards are not enough (at present) • E.g. Common security basis • OMII-Europe: build components in negotiation with gLite, UNICORE, Globus, CROWN

11. October 2001 View Grid Services Web Services Grid Technology • Research driven • Data-intensive • Compute intensive • Collaboration – sharing of resources • - Trust: opening resources • Commerce • Standards • Tools Open Grid Services Architecture

12. What OMII-Europe is Doing? • Initial focus on providing common interfaces and integration of major Grid software infrastructures • Common interoperable services: • Database Access • Virtual Organisation Management • Accounting • Job Submission and Job Monitoring • Infrastructure integration • Initial gLite/UNICORE/Globus interoperability • Interoperable security framework • Access these infrastructure services through a portal

13. JRA4 SA3 SA1 JRA3 SA2 The Virtuous Cycle – Technology transfer with Grid projects and standards organisations Standards Compliance Testing and QA JRA2 New Components Standards Implementation Components JRA1 IN Globus Benchmarking Repository OUT OMII-UK Components CROWN Supported Components on Eval. Infrastructure Integrated Components

14. Common security base OMII-Europe Gateway (portal) Components based on standards Components – How easy are they to use? You will easily be able to find out! Evaluation infrastructures

15. Participation in Middleware Standardisation • Most project participants involved as member/observer in many OGF WG • 11 project participant hold senior positions in • OGSA DAIS WG (Database Access and Integration Services) • OGSA RUS WG (Resource Usage Server) • OGSA BES WG (Basic Execution Service) • OGSA JSDL WG (Job Submission Description Language) • GIN CG (Grid Interoperability Now) • OGSA-AuthZ-WG (Authorization) • GLUE WG • GFSG WG (Grid File System) • RM WG (Reference Model) • OGSA Naming WG • Technical Standards Committee • GSA RG (Grid Scheduling Architecture) • GRAAP WG (Grid Research Agreement Allocation Protocol) • OGSA BYTE IO WG • OGSA D WG (Data) • OGSA DMI WG (Data Movement Interface)

16. Summary • OMII-Europe is a 24 Month EU funded project with 16 partners to establish grid infrastructure interoperability through implementing a set of agreed open standards on all middleware platforms • OMII-Europe is implementing a number of components that will allow identically specified jobs to be run, managed and migrated to different middleware platforms • Users can try interoperability on the OMII-Europe evaluation infrastructure, or obtain services for installation on their own resources from the OMII-Europe repository • We anticipate OMII-Europe services will be integrated into standard middleware distributions - already in UNICORE 6

17. Further Information http://omii-europe.org