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The GROWL Project John Kewley CCLRC Daresbury Laboratory j.kewley@dl.ac.uk

The GROWL Project John Kewley CCLRC Daresbury Laboratory j.kewley@dl.ac.uk. Grid Middleware. "We have encountered serious middleware-related problems which are hindering scientific progress with the Grid:

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The GROWL Project John Kewley CCLRC Daresbury Laboratory j.kewley@dl.ac.uk

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  1. The GROWL Project John Kewley CCLRC Daresbury Laboratory j.kewley@dl.ac.uk

  2. Grid Middleware "We have encountered serious middleware-related problems which are hindering scientific progress with the Grid: • The existing toolkits have an excessively heavy set of software and administrative requirements, … ; • Existing toolkits are painful and difficult to install …; • Existing standards bodies … are not engaging sufficiently with the applications community, and run a substantial risk of producing and implementing Grid architectures which are irrelevant to the requirements of application scientists." Chin and Coveney, RealityGrid, 2004

  3. Typical Installation Difficulties • May need to be root to install • Software must be downloaded from various locations (unless software stacks such as OMII / VDT is used) • There are many choices for type of installation (too many options?) • Firewalls can get in the way when setting things up We focus on end-users – this is all difficult for them

  4. The GROWL Project Collaborative project (JISC VRE programme) between CCLRC Daresbury Laboratory and the Universities of Cambridge and Lancaster. Project Objectives: to produce a lightweight client-side Grid connection toolkit. Mark Hayes Lorna Morris Rob Crouchley Dan Grose Ties van Ark Rob Allan John Kewley Adam Braimah

  5. GROWL Community Bioinformatics Analysis of micro-array expression data. (R and Matlab are popular on users’ workstations) Computational Chemistry Collaboration with CCP1 project to incorporate GROWL C library calls with legacy code, e.g. DLV (GUI), GAMESS-UK , Social Science Grid-enable the SABRE statistical modelling package (based on R) used for work/life history data analysis. Needs access to data (see later). http://www.growl.org.uk/

  6. GROWL will provide • Transparent client-side handling of Grid-related issues, e.g security, file transfer etc. Handled in a similar way to a Web browser. • Configurable modules - libraries and wrappers that interface with existing client software tools • Extensibility via a simple API with common language mappings (C++, C and Fortran). Evolving… • A persistent multi-client server linked to existing Grid components (primarily the Globus toolkit) providing access to HPC resources, session management, scheduling, authentication etc.

  7. But what does that mean? • Basically, GROWL will only download and build sufficient software to provide a client-side interface to Grid software. It will not build you a Grid resource! • GROWL will provide simple, generic interfaces to Grid middleware - remember the 80/20 rule! • If you can have C-linkable libraries in your favourite application, you should be able to link to GROWL (e.g. Matlab, Stata, R).

  8. How GROWL works

  9. Next Steps Figure shows the architecture of ConvertGrid. This was a successful EPSRC-funded pilot project to make Social Science data available to Grid-based applications. GROWL needs to access such data. Grid-enabled data services are needed on the national level.

  10. In Summary • Usability (Simple things should be easy!) • Accessibility (R, Stata, Matlab, Fortran, …) • Lightweight • Strong links with User communities

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