Grid Computing Activities within the Department of Computer Science at UNC-Charlotte

ITSC 8110 Introduction to Information Technology Research 7:30 pm, Wednesday, Nov 1, 2006

Barry WilkinsonDepartment of Computer ScienceUNC-Charlotte

Outline

• Brief description of grid computing

• Activities:

• Supercomputing 2003 conference demonstration• Grid Computing Course (2004- )• VisualGrid Project (2005- )• SURAGrid

“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 Undergraduate/graduate

• Course Home Pagehttp://www.cs.uncc.edu/~abw

/ITCS4010F05

To be offered Spring 2007

Participating Sites, Fall 2005

Participating UNC campusesPrivate institutions

Wake Tech. Community College

Lenoir Rhyne College

Elon University

Fall 2005 Course grid structure

MCNC

UNC-W UNC-A

NCSUWCU

UNC-CASU

CA

CA

CA

CA

CA

CA

CA

Backup facility, not actually used

Some Publications• B. Wilkinson and C. Ferner, “Teaching Grid

Computing across North Carolina Part II,” IEEE Distributed Systems Online, vol 7, no 7, 2006.

• B. Wilkinson and C. Ferner, “Teaching Grid Computing across North Carolina Part I,” IEEE Distributed Systems Online, vol 7, no 6, 2006.

• M. A. Holliday, B. Wilkinson, and J. Ruff, “Using an End-to-End Demonstration in an Undergraduate Grid Computing Course,” ACMSE 2006: 44th ACM Southeast Conference, March 10-12, 2006, Melbourne, Florida.

• 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 (CCGrid2005), 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, Raleigh, NC.

• M. A. Holliday, B. Wilkinson, J. House, S. Daoud, and C. Ferner, “A Geographically-Distributed, Assignment-Structured Undergraduate Grid Computing Course,” SIGCSE 2005 Tech. Symp. on Computer Science Education, St. Louis, Missouri, February 23 - 27, 2005.

National Publicity

Science Grid This WeekFeature story

Gridtoday.com

VisualGrid Project Goal: Collaborative environmental visualization research using

a grid computing infrastructure Started Jan 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

VisualGrid Infrastructure Group:Goal: To create a geographically distributed set of resources and facilitate collaboration between VisualGrid researchers.

Team:

Barry WilkinsonJeremy Villalobos (MS student)Nikul Suthar (MS Student)Keyur Sheth (MS student)Jasper Land (BS student)

Department of Computer ScienceUNC-Charlotte

Infrastructure Support52-node University Research ClusterChuck Price, Director of University Research ComputingMike Mosley, Senior Systems Developer

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

X509 certificates used to provide security in a grid system.

Each user needs a certificate issued by a “certificate authority” (CA).

Grid systems use a so-called user proxy certificates to allow resources to control resources on the user’s behalf.

X509 Certificates

CA’s with Mutual Trust

UNC-C

CA

UNC-A

CA

GT4

Multiple Grid Nodes

With multiple grid nodes, users need:

Account on each system, and access control set accordingly.

A certificate acceptable by the local certificate authority (i.e. signed by a CA it trusts)

Getting an accountGo to portal and select “register”

New User

VisualGrid 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

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

VisualGrid Links

VisualGrid Infrastructure group pagehttp://www.cs.uncc.edu/~abw/VisualGrid/

VisualGrid portalhttp://visualgrid.uncc.edu

VisualGrid Portal User’s Guidehttp://www.cs.uncc.edu/~abw/VisualGrid/PortalInstr.doc

wikihttp://visualgrid.uncc.edu/wiki

Other work:Collaboration with SURAGrid

Develop and offer Grid course(s) using SURAGrid– Crosses state

boundaries. Integrate EE

bioinformatics accelerator into SURAGrid (possible)

Acknowledgements

Partial support for the work described here was provided by the National Science Foundation, University of North Carolina Office of the President, and Environmental Protection Agency.

• 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, $100,000, 2004-2006, Additional Funding,” ref. DUE 0533334, PI: B. Wilkinson, $8216, 2005-2006

• 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, total $650,000, 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, total $557,634, 2004-2006.

• Environmental Protection Agency, “Proposal to Establish the VisualGrid” PI W. Ribarsky, co-PIs S. Bae, B. Wilkinson, H. Inyang, A. Lu, $485,000, 01/02/2006 - 12/31/2006.

Questions?