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How can Computer Networks Support National Grid Initiatives?

How can Computer Networks Support National Grid Initiatives?. Tamás Máray Péter Stefán NIIF/HUNGARNET. Agenda. From individual resources toward integrated grid systems. Computer network as a special service. Role of NRENs. Hungarian Grids.

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How can Computer Networks Support National Grid Initiatives?

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  1. How can Computer Networks Support National Grid Initiatives? Tamás Máray Péter Stefán NIIF/HUNGARNET

  2. Agenda • From individual resources toward integrated grid systems. • Computer network as a special service. • Role of NRENs. • Hungarian Grids. • Layer-2 elements in the grid security architecture. • The benefits of layer-3 techniques. • ClusterGrid initiative. • Conclusions.

  3. From individual resources to the grid • Resources used by local users: • compute resources, • service resources, • special equipment, • storage resources, • etc. • The goal of grid development: to join them together to improve their usability and to create a single, large (world-wide) service/resource pool.

  4. Computer networks • Computer networking appears in many aspects here: • as a connection medium among the different resources (performance aspect), • as a set of extra, “value-added”, mostly unexploited services (architecture point of view). • The role of NRENs is, thus, crucial!

  5. The role of NRENs • Technical level: to provide the connection medium itself. • Organizational level: to provide internal human connection among the NREN and the regional centers/institutions within a country or a region. • Development strategy level: to provide competitive tools for the academic community to improve competitiveness.

  6. The role of NRENs

  7. The role of NRENs

  8. Hungarian grid initiatives • Hungarian grid initiatives can be classified into grid infrastructure and grid system development projects. • Grid principles: • To share resources with each other. Is there a real benefit on this? • To provide a bridge between those institutions that have unexploited resources and those who do not have any but would really need to use them. • The 2-layer grid service provider model.

  9. Grid architecture

  10. Grid architecture • Layered security design from the low-level hardware to the application level. • Why to use computer networking techniques? • to improve security, • to improve privacy and data protection, • to improve transparency in the system, • ease of management.

  11. Layer-2 separation • It came from the cluster-grid world where partially dedicated resources are used (PC-labs on Windows at day-time, and on Linux on night-time). • Benefits: • 802.1q VLANs on Ethernet. • It carries out low-level data flow separation. • It prevents DHCP servers to distrurb each other. • It aids automated booting from the day-shift to the night-shift operation (PXE). • Limitations/needs: • Secure VLANs, • 802.1q support in BIOS PXE.

  12. Layer-3 separation • Why to bother? • Grid software – multiport applications. • Difficult to protect with ordinary access lists and firewalls. • Difficult to match the grid-requirements againts the autonomous institutions’ defense strategy. • Possible solution: Virtial Private Networks that map multiport to a single port connection. • Encryption-based: OpenVPN, IPSec VPN. • Tagging-based: MPLS VPN.

  13. ClusterGrid initiative • It is a pool of 1200 PC nodes throughout the country involving more than 26 clusters. • Supercomputer clusters are planned to be involved too. • A rough measurement on the total compute capacity is about 500 Gflops. • There are 70 users, more than 20 projects, and 100000 jobs executed so far.

  14. ClusterGrid initiative • Fluctuation of grid cluster resources between the day-shift and night-shift operatin. • Blue line – total; Green area – occupied.

  15. ClusterGrid initiative • Authentication and authorization infrastructure: external LDAP service. • PKI infrastructure. • One job – one directory mapping format. • Web services based resource brokering. • Hierarchical monitoring system with integrated weathermaps.

  16. ClusterGrid initiative

  17. ClusterGrid initiative

  18. Conclusions • The computer network is no longer considered as a large unknown cloud from the grid perspective. • NRENs appear not only on the technical level, but on the organizational level too. • Applications like grid helps revealing network bottlenecks. • There are good experiences in NREN-driven grid initiatives in Hungary.

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