Grid MP at ISIS

Tom Griffin, ISIS Facility

Introduction

• About ISIS

• Why Grid MP?

• About Grid MP

• Examples

• The future

Introduction

• ISIS - World's brightest pulsed neutron and muon

source• Running since 1984; 1600 user base; ~200 staff• Neutrons and muons for condensed matter science

• Based at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory

• Driven by scientific output, not computer science

http://www.isis.rl.ac.uk

Why does ISIS need faster processing?• Many compute intensive programs and problems

• Many applications which could be compute

intensive

• Large range of application domains

• Simulations

• Analysing results

• Designing new instruments

• Visualising ideas

Why Grid MP?

• Neutron science not computer science

• Run by data analysis group

• Long interest in distributed computing

• Sun Workstations

• Condor

• Entropia DC Grid

• United Devices

Why Grid MP?

• ‘Out of box’ solution

• United Devices Grid MP is the ‘market leader’

• Customers include:

• Johnson & Johnson

• GlaxoSmithKline

• Novartis

• National Physical Laboratory

Why Grid MP?

• Set up and running real applications in under 3

hours

• Excellent service level

• Get what you pay for!

• Queries and problems always answered promptly

• Active development

The United Devices System• Server hardware

• We use two, dual Xeon servers + 280 client licenses• Could (will) easily cope with more clients

• Software• Servers run RedHat Linux Advanced Server / DB2• Clients available for Windows, Linux, SPARCs and Macs

•Programming• MGSI – Web Services interface – XML, SOAP• Accessed with C++ and Java classes etc

• Management Console• Web browser based• Can manage services, jobs, devices etc

Installing and Deploying the System• Servers

• Complete set up in under 3 hours

• Virtually self maintaining

• Clients• Windows only so far

• MSI Installer

• approx 20 seconds

• SMS

• MP Agent User

• Install to other OSs looks straightforward

Grid MP Mode of operation• Client – Server

• Submitting PC breaks up Job

• Uploads data to server

• Programs reside on the server

• Server distributes Workunits to clients

• Clients return results to server

• User downloads results from server

Getting an Application Running

• Don’t touch executable code

• Wrap and upload executable

• Write ‘Application Service’

• Typically only a few hours work

Some Features of the Grid MP System• Device to Job matching

• Jobs have requirements – CPU, RAM, free disk space etc

• Programs have requirements

• Devices have preferences

• choose what programs they want to run

• Administrator can choose which users may submit to which

machines

Some Features of the Grid MP System• Timing options

• When to execute

• When to communicate

Some Features of the Grid MP System• Good access/privileges control

• Very powerful

• Read, update, create, delete

• Can hook into Active Directory, Kerberos etc

• Built in basic reporting

• Job / Program CPU hours

• Performance stats

What do we use it for?

• 16 Applications running so far:

• Several molecular dynamics apps

• several neutron instrument simulation packages

• crystal structure solution

• maximum entropy calculations

• POVRay image rendering

What performance do we get?

• Roughly linear for current applications

• Running on 100 machines is 100 times faster

• Average CPU 2.03Ghz

• High percentage of AMD Athlons

Web Interface - Monitoring Jobs

Problems Encountered

• Mercifully few

• Only once the Grid’s fault

• Memory thresholding

• Odd program interactions

• Fortran and OpenGL

• Easiest thing to blame

• Too abstract for some users (no big box)• Stealing my cycles

• Expansion leads to political problems

‘Social’ Issues

• Expansion• Applied for 400 licenses (£60k)

• Change in licensing model

The Future

• Bottom line• Unlimited licenses

• Total $250K

• No technical issues

• Plenty of political issues

• Single sign-on