Stone Soup Workshop:Research Computing Redux

Setting the Stage

Goals and Outcomes

Who we are

External Contexts• CyberInfrastructure• Federal agencies and national labs• PACI’s• Grids

Workshop Goals

Share approaches to enterprise support of research computing

• Resources• Services

Understand how campuses are approaching faculty using national resources and participating in virtual organizations

Identify need/value of ongoing flywheeled discussions

Who we are…

Central vs departmental/distributed

Technical vs management vs user support

Steady vs grant funding

…

Cyberinfrastructure

A broad definition, centering around computational, data and networking resources, but with dimensions of workforce readiness, etc.

The Atkins report to PITAC and NSF as the blueprint

The SCI division of CISE as one part of the implementation

The budget and the associated programs yet to emerge.

NMI and PACI as the models…

Federal agencies

The well-spring of much research computing support

Campus scientists funded to solve agency research problems, collaborating with agency and lab personnel and using lab data and computers

Used to fund research networks, though that is diminishing

Many of the big agencies – NSF, DOE, NASA. NIH – support both traditional and Grid-oriented major initiatives

Coordination is loose and revolves around two or three committees – LSN, MAGIC, JET

External computing resources

A few discipline specific – NCAR, NASA Ames, etc.

The PACI’s – SDSC, PSC, NCSA

State capacities – Ohio, North Carolina, California

National Labs• Minnesota High Performance Army• Maui DOE• Energy Sites: LBL, Argonne, Los Alamos, etc.

International – CERN, Radar Telescopes, etc – primarily remote instruments, but with massive data processing needs

Grids: Hype, Reality and Hyperreality

Intent and lineage

Interrealm and intra-realm Grids

Standards and code

Major deployments• Infrastructure• User communities

International perspective

Integration with the enterprise

Intent and Lineage

Create a consistent and coordinated computing environment using widely distributed and heterogenous resources

• Later extended to apply to data sets and remote instrumentation

Widely and loosely used term and concepts since operating systems first got boring

Branded as a specific architecture in the Kesselman and Foster book, and then a specific instantiation of that architecture in a set of code called Globus

Today a confusing set of architectures, organizations, and code bases

Grids today

Perceived as the only viable answer to:• Physical limits in traditional computing approaches• Funding limits for scientific instruments• Scaling issues in massive data sets

A set of major funded and highly visible science projects in the US and Europe

A set of buzz-erds – Grids Today, random conferences, etc.

A challenged standards process

A tangled set of code alternatives

Interrealm and intra realm Grids

Inter-realm • Traditional model of distributed systems, located in autonomous

realms, being harnessed as a uniform resource for users in those realms and external virtual organization users.

• Exposes numerous AAA issues, as well as policy dimensions to scheduling, data staging, etc.

Intra-realm (Enterprise)• Harnessing the resources within an enterprise to either serve the

high-end needs of the enterprise (Boeing) or as an outsourced service provider (IBM on-demand..)

• No longer needs open standards for AAA, and simplified OS issues• Might require an external web service interface

Standards and code

Globus as the “de facto” standard• GT3 is the current version; related to NMI releases• There are deviant paths based on GT2• And other distinct code bases…• And commercial stand-alone product

Lots of add in modules with complex interactions Increasing use of proxies and portals to hide the

complexityGlobal Grid Forum, standards and meetings Enterprise Grid AllianceOGSA and WSRF; GGF and OASIS

Major deployments

Infrastructure• Teragrid• DOE Grid• NEES Grid• NASA Grid

User communities• Physicists• Energy researchers• Medical researchers, chemists, geologists to come• Plans to extend to broad communities such as undergrads and

school kids…

International Perspective

Several major, apparently successful efforts in Europe, many revolving around CERN; one of the highlights of the EU; good showcases in Asia

UK e-Science is a major set of programs

Less expectation of leveraging the enterprise

Simpler scaling issues

Partnerships with US are essential

Grim realities

Code base is complex, changing, and incomplete

Standard gaps are numerous and in critical spots

Sharing is hard

Teragrid security incident

Deadlines slip and gross simplifications are needed

And yet, IMHO, they need to be mastered.

Integration points with the enterprise

The desktops sit on a campus

The users have primarily campus orientations

The users tend to have significant campus prominence

Frequently the resources sit on campuses

Frequently the resources are jointly owned and operated by a virtual organization and a real organization