Grid Computing Activities within the Department of Computer Science at UNC-Charlotte
ITSC 8110 Introduction to Information Technology Research 7:30 pm, Thursday, August 30, 2007
Barry WilkinsonDepartment of Computer ScienceUNC-Charlotte
Outline
• Brief description of Grid computing
• Some Activities:
• Supercomputing 2003 conference demonstration• Original Grid Computing Course (2004-2006)• New Grid Computing Course (2007-)• VisualGrid Project (2005-2006)• SURAGrid• PhD project (2007-)
“The grid virtualizes heterogeneous geographically disperse resources” from "Introduction to Grid Computing with Globus," IBM Redbooks
Using geographically distributed and interconnected computers together for computing and for resource sharing.
Grid Computing
Usually, involves teams working together on a common goal, sharing computing resources and possibly experimental equipment.
Crosses multiple administrative domains.
Geographically distributed grid computing team called a virtual organization.
Applications
Originally e-Science applications– Computational intensive
• Not necessarily one big problem but a problem that has to be solved repeatedly with different parameters.
– Data intensive.– Experimental collaborative projects
Now also e-Business applications to improve business models and practices.
Supercomputing 2003 Demonstration
First personal contact with Grid computing (November 2003).
Participant in Supercomputing 2003 demo organized by the University of Melbourne (Raj Buyya).
21 countries, numerous sites.
Grid Computing Course Taught on North Carolina
Research and Education televideo network that connects all 16 state campuses and also private institutions
Fall 2004: 8 sites Fall 2005: 12 sites Spring 2007: 3 sites
(experimental)
Undergraduate/graduate ITCS 4146/5146
14 Participating Sites (total)
Western Carolina University
UNC Greensboro
Appalachian State University
UNC AshevilleWinston-Salem State
University
UNC Chapel Hill
NC State University
NC Central University
Lenoir Rhyne College
UNC Wilmington
Elon University
UNC Pembroke
UNC Charlotte
Wake Tech. Comm. College
© World Sites Atlas (sitesatlas.com)
SOUTH CAROLINA
VIRGINIA
TENNESSEE
GEORGIA
NORTH CAROLINA
http://www.cs.uncc.edu/~abw/ITCS4146S07
Spring 2007 Course Home Page
Course portal (OGCSE2/Gridsphere)
Portal provides single sign-on to all grid resources.
Getting an accountGo to portal and select “register”
New User
Course on-line registration form
CA/SystemAdministrator
Create accounts, set access control, sign certificate, …
Fill in formProvide password and other information
Email• Request Confirmation• Acknowledgement
Contact other grid resource administrators if users requests account on their resource
Assignment 1 Using Grid computing portal
Assignment 2 Using the Grid through a command line.
Assignment 3 Using a scheduler (Condor-G)
Assignment 4 Installing GT4 core. Creating, deploying, and testing a GT4 Grid service.
Assignment 5 Installing and using GridNexus workflow editor to create and execute workflows.
Assignment 6 Implementing a portlet with OGCSE2/Gridsphere portal.
Assignment 7 MPI assignment on Grid
Mini-project Developing grid computing assignment
Programming Assignments (Spring 2007)
Assignments 4, 5, and 6 require students to install significant software packages on their own computer.
GridNexus Workflow
using Grid Services
Developed by UNC-Wilmington
Guest Speakers (2004) Professor Daniel A. Reed, Chancellor's Eminent Professor,
Vice Chancellor for IT and CIO, UNC-Chapel Hill, Director of Institute for Renaissance Computing, UNC Chapel Hill, Duke University, and NC State University:
– “Grid computing: 21st Century Challenges.”
Dr. Wolfgang Gentzsch, Managing Director, MCNC Grid Computing and Networking Services:
– “Grid Computing in the Industry”
Chuck Kesler, Director, Grid Deployment and Data Center Services, MCNC:
– “Security Policy, Legal, and Regulatory Challenges in Grid Computing Environments”
Professor Ian Foster, Argonne National Laboratory and University of Chicago:
– “The Grid: Beyond the Hype.” Taped presentation (originally given at Duke University, Sept. 14th, 2004).
Guest Speakers (2005)
Jeff Schmitt, genesismolecular.com Jim Jokl, University of Virginia, Art Vandenberg, Georgia
State University, Mary Fran Yafchak, SURA:– "Development and Implementation of an Inter-Institutional Multi-
purpose Grid”
Lavanya Ramakrishnan, The Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI), UNC Chapel Hill, NC State University, and Duke University:
– "Leveraging the Grid: Application Perspective”
Guest Speakers (2007)
Purushotham Bangalore, University of Alabama at Birmingham, “Experiences building and using UABgrid”
Joel Hollingsworth, Elon University, "The Implementation of an Evolutionary-Based Engineering Optimization Framework for the Grid”
Carla Hunt, MCNC, “EnLIGHTened computing: Highly-dynamic Applications Driving Adaptive Grid Resources”.
Some Publications• B. Wilkinson and C. Ferner, “Teaching Grid
Computing across North Carolina Part I and Part II,” IEEE Distributed Systems Online, vol 7, no 6-7, 2006.
• M. A. Holliday, B. Wilkinson, and J. Ruff, “Using an End-to-End Demonstration in an Undergraduate Grid Computing Course,” ACMSE 2006, March 10-12, 2006.
• B. Wilkinson, M. Holliday, and C. Ferner, “Experiences in Teaching a Geographically Distributed Undergraduate Grid Computing Course,” Workshop, IEEE Int. Symp. Cluster Computing and the Grid, Cardiff, UK, May 9 - 12, 2005.
• B. Wilkinson and M. Holliday, “State-Wide Collaborative Grid Computing Course,” 2005 Teaching and Learning with Technology Conference, March 30, 2005.
• M. A. Holliday, B. Wilkinson, J. House, S. Daoud, and C. Ferner, “A Geographically-Distributed, Assignment-Structured Undergraduate Grid Computing Course,” SIGCSE 2005, February 23 - 27, 2005.
National Publicity
Science Grid This WeekFeature story
Gridtoday.com
Successes
This course was first offered in Fall 2004 and is probably the first such course in the country, and possibly in the world, to involve undergraduate students and so many distributed sites using a televideo system such as NCREN and a truly distributed grid infrastructure.
VisualGrid Project (Completed) Goal: Collaborative environmental visualization research using
a grid computing infrastructure Jan 2006 – Dec 2006 Involves two sites:
– UNC-Charlotte– UNC-Asheville
plus Environment Protection Agency, Raleigh, NC (funding agency)
EPA
Project Structure at UNC-C(Virtual Organization)
Visualization Charlotte Visualization Center
Bill Ribrasky, Bank of America Endowed Chair of Information Technology (VisualGrid PI)
Aidong Lu, Asst. Professor of Computer Science Environmental Studies Global Inst. of Energy & Environmental
Syst.
Hilary Inyang, Duke Energy Distinguished Professor
Sunyoung Bae, Research Associate
Grid InfrastructureBarry Wilkinson, Professor of Computer Science
Development System(Four 3.4 Ghz dual Xeons)
visualgrid.uncc.eduVisualization
lab data server (4 Tbytes)
Compute resources52-node (104 processor)
University Research Cluster
Software: Globus 4.0, Condor.
CA
CA
Certificate Authority
UNC-Charlotte resources
UNC-Asheville resources
transylvania.tr.cs.unca.edu(8-node system)
VisualGrid ConfigurationVisualGrid portal
National AttentionListed as one of the portals to use OGCE2
UNC-Asheville
Bioinformatics hardware accelerator
52-node UNC-Charlotte university research cluster
UNC-C Dept of CS grid computing development system
4TB Windows 2003 data server reached through coit-grid02.uncc.edu (samba mount)
Sample VisualGrid portlets
One CMAQ script editing portlet
CMAQ portlet, main page
CMAQ settings portlet Tabs for various CMAQ actions
Other work: Collaboration with SURAGrid
PhD Grid Computing Project
Jeremy Villalobos PhD student (Fall 2007 - )
Previously worked on an MS thesis on Grid Computing, exploring synchronous computations on a Grid computing platform and ways to improve performance.
First paper written:“Latency Hiding by Redundant Processing (LHRP): A Technique to Reduce WAN Latency in Grid-enabled, Iterative, Lightly Coupled Synchronous Parallel Programs,” J. Villalobos and B. Wilkinson
AcknowledgementsSupport for the work described here was provided by the National Science Foundation, and University of North Carolina Office of the President.
• National Science Foundation, “Introducing Grid Computing into the Undergraduate Curricula,” ref. DUE 0410667, PI: A. B. Wilkinson, co-PI’s Mark Holliday and D. Luginbuhl, 2004-2007, Additional Funding,” ref. DUE 0533334, PI: B. Wilkinson, 2005-2007
• University of North Carolina Office of President, “A Consortium to Promote Computational Science and High Performance Computing,” PI: B. Kurtz (Appalachian State University) co-PIs: B. Berg, W. Campbell, W. Hightower, M. Holliday, J. Hollingworth, R. Hull, D-H Hwang, S. Lea, Y. Li, S. V. Providence, D. Powell, R. Shore, S. Suthaharan, R. Tashakkori, and B. Wilkinson, 2004-2006.
• University of North Carolina Office of President, “Fostering Undergraduate Research Partnerships through a Graphical User Environment for the North Carolina Computing Grid,” PI: R. Vetter (UNC-Wilmington), co-PIs: L. Bartolotii, D. R. Berman, R. Boston, J. Brown, C. Ferner, T. Hudson, T. Janicki, N. Martin, M. McClelland, J. Porter, A. Stapleton, and B. Wilkinson, 2004-2006.
Questions?