Grid Basics

Adarsh Patilhttp://www.adarshpatil.com/

http://www.adarshpatil.com/grid_tutorial.htm

What is Grid ?

It is a volatile heterogeneous distributed system. It is all about sharing resources. It integrates all the heterogeneous resources that are spread across

multiple administrative domains (educational institutions, offices, industries) across the world.

It gives transparent/collaborative access to these resources and has distributed Job management system.

It gives a feeling of Desktop supercomputing - means you are sitting in front of your desktop but you are connected to supercomputer.

Grid grows and shrinks dynamically. There is nothing as such you have a static set of resources which we call as Grid.

Cluster is not a Grid.

http://www.adarshpatil.com/grid_tutorial.htm

What we mean by Grid Resources?

PCs, Desktops, Workstations, Clusters, Software's Cluster of Clusters, Clusters of workstations, Piles of PCs Storage elements Mainframes, Supercomputers Visualization Instruments Collaborative Scientists and end users Applications(we may note here that resources involved in Grid are heterogeneous.

For example : different type of processors Pentium, AMD, PowerPC)

http://www.adarshpatil.com/grid_tutorial.htm

Why do we need to build Grid?

To integrate and aggregate affordable(PC,Desktop,Printers) and unaffordable (clusters,supercomputers,mainframes,giant telescope etc) resources

To provide high throughput To build and harvest collaborative boundaries across various

communities in research. To give the user feeling of using a most powerful computer. Make fruitful use of the underlying resources and make it as a

commodity

http://www.adarshpatil.com/grid_tutorial.htm

Difference between Grid and Cluster

CharacteristicsCharacteristics GridGrid ClusterCluster

SystemHeterogeneous

(Pentium, AMD, PowerPC, Different Operating systems, Multiple owners)

Homogeneous(only one kind of processor)

Single system ImageNo

Number of autonomous systems Yes

Job Management System Distributed Centralized

Number of Nodes Ranges from 10s to millions Ranges from 10 to 100k

Fault ToleranceScheduling

Security

Everything is distributed, concept of Local resource managers and Resource brokers

Centralized scheduling, Fault Tolerance and security.

Software's used Mixture of Open Source and Proprietary Mostly Open Source Software's

Transparent Access It gives transparent access to whatever resources connected.

Only access to the nodes of the Cluster and its attached storage.

Computing It is High Throughput Computing (HTC) It is High Performance Computing

AvailabilityHighly Volatile, resource join and leave.

No guarantee of quality of ServiceHighly Available . Good quality of

service

http://www.adarshpatil.com/grid_tutorial.htm

How can we build a Grid?

This question has answers within itself . With respect to Grid this question means: How do we take part in the Grid?

• Or

How do we contribute to the Grid ?• Or

How to we use the Grid? Grid is a social being. Grid is analogous to Electricity Grid. Now if you ask How do we build Electricity Grid? Answers may be

Connect to an existing Grid and use it (as a user) and contribute (as a resource). Build a grid using the existing resources using Grid toolkits , Core Middleware's,

User Level Middleware's. Getting connected is being part of the Grid.

http://www.adarshpatil.com/grid_tutorial.htm

Some Terminology Basics

Middleware = Resource Broker = Resource Manager . Local Resource Manager - the one which is installed on a standalone PC / Node. Core Level Middleware - the one which controls Local Resource Managers. Grid Computing = large scale Distributed Computing Grid computing superset of Cluster computing, Utility computing, On-demand computing,

Metacomputing, P2P computing. Testbed - it’s an infrastructure built out of commodity or proprietary hardware / software to test

your research ideas, experiments and activities. Example: Practice court for playing tennis or squash.

Virtual Organizations: A community of users having common research interests and testbed supporting their interests. For Example: a group of physicists , a group of chemists , a group of doctors, a group of computer scientists. Each of these groups forms a Virtual Organization (VO).

Grid has no standard definition. Everyone has their own definition of Grid. So before jumping into what a person/company says its big into Grid Computing, get to know their definition of Grid.

Please keep in mind the basic of everything remains the same but they change the name and attach new letters/words to it

Well future is “Grid”

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Credits / Acknowledgements

To all the authors/users/administrators/researchers of the Grid Community

Please mail me if you want to make changes or have any questions

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