Campus grids: e-Infrastructure within a University

1. Campus grids: e-Infrastructure within a University Mike Mineter National e-Science Centre mjm@nesc.ac.uk

2. Thanks to: • Mark Calleja, Cambridge • David McBride, Imperial College • David Wallom, Oxford • Jonathan Giddy, Welsh e-Science Centre • John Brodholt, UCL for descriptions of their campus initiatives.

3. Overview • Goals • Methods & Examples • Some opportunities and implications

4. Goals of campus grids • Resource utilisation • Computers: in each university x,000 PCs are little used • Research data • Collaboration • Access Grids – meetings across sites • Sharing visualisation, data, programs • Infrastructure for research • From resource sharing in a university to international collaboration with one middleware stack

5. Overview • Goals • Methods & Examples • Harvesting CPU cycles • Crossing administrative domains • Globus • Storage Resource Broker • Some opportunities and implications

6. Harvesting CPU time Often-idle processors!! Teaching labs. + Researchers Analyses constrained by CPU time!

7. Harvesting CPU time • Teaching lab machines lie idle for most of the time • Harvest spare compute cycles to create a low-cost “high throughput computing” (HTC) platform • Goal: run many tasks in a week, month, … • Typically: many similar tasks invoked from workflow or a script • Monte-Carlo • Simulation – parameter sweeps • Pool processors as a batch processing resource • Submit jobs that run when a machine is free • Condor most common approach • http://www.cs.wisc.edu/condor/

8. submission machines Linux central manager UCL Pool > 1000 CPUS Platforms: Windows XP and 2000 Capacity: 256Mb-1Gb RAM; Intel 3 (1Ghz) – Intel 4 (3.2Ghz) The UCL Condor Pool Different projects can have their own submission machine Note: need Windows executable (.exe file) John Brodholt UCL

9. CaO-termimated Mineral Surfaces • Calculations: • investigate 10-20 surfaces • 2 to 5 surface terminations • 4 to 16 impurity positions • > 4 concentrations • Total number of calculations • per impurity: 120-2440 {001} surfaces of CaTiO3 TiO2-termimated M. Alfredsson, J.P. Brodholt and G.D. Price et al, Submitted to Nature Materials

10. Use these surface energies to predict crystal forms as a function of type dopant AND concentration: Maria Alfredsson, UCL

11. Predicted Morphology of Ni-doped CaTiO3 SEM-picture of Ni-doped CaTiO3 Crystal Morphologies of Ni-doped CaTiO3 (submitted to Nature Materials) Maria Alfredsson, UCL

12. Campus grids • Resources in many administrative domains • Need basic services that provide: • Authentication, Authorisation mechanisms • Based on certificates • Single sign-on to access many resources • Control of who can do what • Job submission services • Submit jobs to batch queues on clusters or Condor pools • Information systems • So you know what can be used • Ability to share data

13. Middleware for campus grids • Globus toolkit http://www.globus.org/ • Tools built on Grid Security Infrastructure and include: • Job submission: run a job on a remote computer • Information services: So I know which computer to use • Storage Resource Broker http://www.sdsc.edu/srb/ • Virtual filesystem: for files held in multiple locations • NIEES offers a testbed to give experience with SRB • SRB and Globus Toolkit 2 are part of the National Grid Service stack

14. Globus is a Toolkit • To submit a job to run on a remote computer globus-job-submit grid-data.rl.ac.uk/jobmanager-pbs /bin/hostname -f https://grid-data.rl.ac.uk:64001/1415/1110129853/ globus-job-status https://grid-data.rl.ac.uk:64001/1415/1110129853/ DONE globus-job-get-output https://grid-data.rl.ac.uk:64001/1415/1110129853/ grid-data12.rl.ac.uk • Needs higher level services • Brokers to allow jobs to be submitted to “a grid” • VO- specific developments e.g. Portals

15. SRB server SRB server SRB server Resource Driver Resource Driver Resource Driver Storage Resource Broker User sees a virtual filesytem: • Command line (S-Commands) • MS Windows (InQ) • Web based (MySRB). • Java (JARGON) • Web Services (MATRIX) Filesystems in different admin. domains

16. OxGrid Central Management Broker MDS/ VOM Storage Example: OxGrid, a University Campus Grid • Single entry point for Oxford users to shared and dedicated resources • Seamless access to National Grid Service and OSC for registered users • Single sign-on using PKI technology integrated with current methods OSC NGS Oxford Users College Resources Departmental Resources David Wallom

17. Observations • Need specific initial user communities >> vague sense this is a good idea! • Engage with systems managers from first thoughts • Operations effort must be factored in and justifiable! Researcher enthusiasm is not enough! • Be alert to National Grid Service deployment of middleware, and potential for interoperability

18. Summary • Campus grids enable • High throughput computing • Improve resource utilisation • Collaboration – share processes, data, storage • Builds culture, skills and infrastructure for service-oriented research… • Advantages of using the same stack as the National Grid Service • Expertise and support available • Smaller leaps to partnership in and use of the NGS • White Rose Grid pioneered this!... and provides the expertise for others…