UT Grid: Building a campus grid

Ashok Adiga, Ph.D.Distributed & Grid Computing GroupTexas Advanced Computing Center

The University of Texas at Austinadiga@tacc.utexas.edu

(512) 471-8196

TACC Grid Program

• TACC involved in several Grid projects– Campus Grid (UT Grid, partially funded by IBM) – State Grid (TIGRE)– National Grid (ETF)

• Grid Hardware Resources– Wide range of hardware resources available to research community

at UT and partners

• Grid Software Resources– Significantly leverage NMI GRIDS components (Globus Toolkit,

GPT, MyProxy, Gridport, GridFTP, …)– Other software where necessary

• Resource managers (Condor, LSF, PBS, United Devices)• Schedulers (Condor, Community Scheduling Framework)

TeraGrid (National)

• NSF Extensible Terascale Facility (ETF) project– build and deploy the world's largest, fastest, distributed computational

infrastructure for general scientific research– 40 Gbps backbone with hubs in Los Angeles, Chicago & Atlanta

• UT (led by TACC) going online on Teragrid October 1 2004– 10 Gbps network connection to ETF backbone– Provide access to high-end computers capable of 6.2 teraflops, a new

terascale visualization system, and a 2.8-petabyte mass storage system– Provide access to geoscience data collections used in environmental,

geological climate and biological research:• high-resolution digital terrain data• worldwide hydrological data• global gravity data• high-resolution X-ray computed tomography data

• Current software stack includes: Globus (GSI, GRAM, GridFTP), MPICH-G2, Condor-G, GPT, MyProxy, SRB

TIGRE (State-wide Grid)

• Texas Internet Grid for Research and Education– computational grid to integrate computing & storage

systems, databases, visualization laboratories and displays, and instruments and sensors across Texas.

– Funding announced by Gov. Rick Perry at Internet2– TIGRE members include several leading state

institutes:• Rice, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, U of Houston, UT Austin,

UT El Paso, others…– Initial software stack will use NMI GRIDS

UT Grid Vision: A Powerful, Flexible, and Simple Virtual Environment for Research

& EducationThe UT Grid vision is the creation of a cyberinfrastructure for research and education in which people can develop and test ideas, collaborate, teach, and learn through applications that seamlessly harness the diverse campus compute, visualization, storage, data, and instruments as needed from their personal systems (PCs) and interfaces (web browsers, GUIs, etc.).

UT Grid: Develop and Provide a Unique, Comprehensive

Cyberinfrastructure…The strategy of the UT Grid project is to integrate…

– common security/authentication– scheduling and provisioning– aggregation and coordination

diverse campus resources…– computational (PCs, servers, clusters)– storage (Local HDs, NASes, SANs, archives)– visualization (PCs, workstations, displays, projection rooms)– data collections (sci/eng, social sciences, communications, etc.)– instruments & sensors (CT scanners, telescopes, etc.)

from ‘personal scale’ to terascale…– personal laptops and desktops– department servers and labs– institutional (and national) high-end facilities

…That Provides Maximum Opportunity & Capability for Impact in Research,

Education…into a campus cyberinfrastructure…

– evaluate existing grid computing technologies– develop new grid technologies– deploy and support appropriate technologies for production use– continue evaluation, R&D on new technologies– share expertise, experiences, software & techniques

that provides simple access to all resources…– through web portals– from personal desktop/laptop PCs, via custom CLIs and GUIs

to the entire community for maximum impact on– computational research in applications domains– educational programs– grid computing R&D

UT Grid Approach: Leverage Strengths of Campus Environment

• Like any grid, campus grid must provide services to simplify use of distributed resources

• But– Focus must be to support research and/or

education mission of the university– Campus grid can leverage vast numbers of PCs

and large numbers of clusters– Campus grid can integrate novel scientific data

collections and research instruments

UT Grid Approach: Leverage Strengths of Campus Environment

• Important differences from multi-institution grids:– Staff in one location, can collaborate face-to-face– ‘Controlled’ network environment– High-end computing center can lead deployment

• Important differences from enterprise grids– Researchers generally more independent than in company– No central IT group governs researchers’ systems– Usage models driven by different priorities

• Important differences from domain-specific grids– Might require integration of wider variety of resources– Must support wider variety of usage models

UT Has Massive Scale and Unique Deployment Environment

• ACES building is a model for a university grid– Massive bandwidth– Multidisciplinary users– Numerous PC, clusters, visualization systems,

storage resources

• UT main campus + UT research campus can be model for multi-institution grid– Separated by true WAN, but UT controls paths– Massive bandwidth (10GigE) between campus– TACC controls resources on both campuses

UT Grid Project Team Has Participation From Several Campus

Departments…• Additional UT Partners

– Information Technology Services (ITS):• deploying Roundup clients, will include client s/w in BevoWare

– College of Engineering IT Group:• deploying Roundup clients

– Center for Instructional Technology (CIT):• Helped with Web site, will create education content

– Department of Computer Sciences• integrating Condor flock, partnering in R&D proposals

– Institute for Computational Engineering & Sciences (ICES):• integrating clusters and Condor flock

..and Participation Will Grow Significantly as We Enter Production

• Additional Partners Expected in next 6 months– Mary Wheeler, ICES

• integrating cluster, leading-edge user

– Kamy Sepehrnoori, Dept of Petroleum & Geophysical Eng.• integrating cluster, leading-edge user

– College of Fine Arts• providing Roundup clients

– College of Communications• interested in storage services

– Additional outreach through UT ‘Tech Deans’ Committee– Additional users through TACC User Services

UT Grid Components

• Grid User Interfaces– Typical grid interface is via user portals– Grid User Nodes provide users with command line (shell)

interfaces to the grid

• Grid Resources– Compute, storage, visualization, instruments– Grid software must provide security, monitoring, remote

access

• Grid Services– Authentication (GSI, MyProxy)– Scheduling (Condor, CSF)– Data management (SRB, Avaki)

UT Grid: Current Status• Providing compute services to users today

– Heterogeneous set of cluster resources (LSF, PBS, LoadLeveler, Condor) and desktop resources (United Devices, Condor)

– Single sign-on access via user portal– Allocation and support procedures– Resource monitoring– Serial and parallel job submission to clusters and desktop

resources– Evaluation of scheduling technologies (Condor, CSF)– Evaluating workflow solutions (Pegasus)

• Basic data services– Reliable File Transfer tool built using GridFTP, NWS, GPIR– Share data across resources using Avaki data grid– SRB

• Visualization services coming soon– Remote interactive visualization, Batch rendering, Computational

Steering

Challenges Include Scale, Heterogeneity, Purpose, and Policies• Usage models:

– research vs education (vs. administrative)– ISV apps vs custom apps– Interactive vs batch– Serial codes vs parallel codes– Etc.

• Most are locally managed– Local policies and procedures– Different priorities– Sense of ownership– Varying expertise levels of administrators– Varying levels of support

UT Grid: Approach to building the grid

• Challenge: Getting scientists to use UT Grid– Gain confidence that they can meet their

computing goals and benefit from using the grid– Share their resources by making them available to

other grid users

• Hub & Spoke approach rather than peer resources– Leverage existing trust relationships between

TACC and campus research users– As users become comfortable with grid software,

convince them to share their resources

UT Grid: Logical View

• Integrate each set of resources(compute, vis, storage, data)within TACC first

TACC Compute,Vis, Storage, Data

(actually spread across two campuses)

UT Grid: Logical View

• Next add other UTresources usingsame tools andprocedures

ACES Data

ACES PCs

TACC Compute,Vis, Storage, Data

ACES Cluster

UT Grid: Logical View

• Next add other UTresources usingsame tools andprocedures

ACES PCs

GEO Cluster

GEO Data

TACC Compute,Vis, Storage, Data

GEO Cluster

ACES DataACES Cluster

UT Grid: Logical View

ACES PCs

BIO Data BIO Instrument

PGE Cluster

PGE Instrument

• Next add other UTresources usingsame tools andprocedures

PGE Data

TACC Compute,Vis, Storage, Data

ACES DataACES Cluster

GEO Data

GEO Cluster

GEO Cluster

UT Grid: Logical View

• Finally negotiateconnectionsbetween spokesfor willing participantsto develop a P2P grid. ACES PCs

BIO Data BIO Instrument

PGE Cluster

PGE Data

PGE Instrument

TACC Compute,Vis, Storage, Data

ACES DataACES Cluster

GEO Data

GEO Cluster

GEO Cluster

Accessing UT Grid: Portals vs CLIs

• Choice of portals over command line interfaces is not universal– Some researchers prefer to use their current shell

interface to access the grid

• UT Grid supports Grid User Portals (GUPs) and Grid User Nodes (GUNs)

Why Are GUPs Important?

• Lower the barrier of entry into grid computing– Easy access to multiple resources through a

single interface– Simple GUI interface to complex grid computing

capabilities– Present a “Virtual Organization” view of the Grid

as a whole

UT GUP Infrastructure

• Portal based on– Grid Portal Toolkit 3 (NMI component)– Jetspeed Portal infrastructure

• Underlying Grid Middleware– Globus– Community Scheduling Framework– Network Weather Service– Soon: Avaki, SRB

UT GUP Capabilities

• Initial GUP capabilities include: – View information on resources within UT Grid,

including status, load, jobs, queues, etc.– View network bandwidth and latency between

systems, aggregate capabilities for all systems.– Submit user jobs and run hosted applications– Manage files across systems, and move/copy

multiple files between resources with transfer time estimates

UT Grid User Portal

Job Submission templates

Community Scheduling Framework (CSF)

• Open-source metascheduler written by Platform Computing– Distributed under Globus Public License– Developed using GT3.0.2 and OGSI– Will be part of future Globus Toolkit distribution

• Schedules jobs across heterogeneous resources– Advanced reservation support– Architecture allows pluggable scheduling policies– Resource Manager Adapters required to convert requests to

local resource manager.– Dynamic performance information stored in Global

Information Service

UT Grid CSF Configuration

Queuing Service

Queuing Service

GT3.0

Job Service

Job Service

Reservation Service

Reservation Service

CSF Server

GT3.0RM

Adapterfor LSF

LSF

GridPortGridPort

User PortalUser Portal

Web Server

GT3.0

LSF LSF

PBS

PBSGT3.0

RMAdapterfor PBS

Queues implement customizable scheduling policies using plug-ins

Why Are GUNs Important?

• Most campus users have PCs for their research & education projects– They are used to their local systems

• They also often need additional resources– They may want more flexibility than a portal provides– They need to be able to keep doing what they know, issuing

same commands, but reaching additional resources– They would like access to those resources easily, even

transparently

• The Grid User Node concept is designed to provide these features and capabilities

Current Linux GUN SoftwareUsers have the option of installing software stack on

their desktops or using “hosted” GUN.

• Linux Red Hat 9.0• Globus 3.2.1 NMI Release 5

– Ant v1.6.2– Java J2SE SDK v1.4– Grid Package Tools v3.2.1 NMI 5

• GridShell (pre-release version)• Condor• MPICH• United Devices SDK 4.1

– Perl v 5.6

What is GridShell?

• GridShell is an extension of TCSH and BASH shells– includes transparent distributed execution and

data transfer features for intra and inter cluster execution of programs

– Currently supports LSF, Condor and Globus environments

– Goal is to extend services to match portal services

Grid User Node

UT Grid: Application driven design

• UT Grid design based on user requirements– Initial user set has been identified– Monthly meetings, mailing lists– Interviews to understand use cases

• Initial set of application areas have compute, storage and visualization requirements– Computational Fluid Dynamics (Dr. Carey)– Reservoir modeling (Dr. Wheeler)– Flood prediction (Dr. Wells & Dr. Maidment)

UT Grid: Education

• Training courses offered 3-4 times/year– Gridport (offered via Access Grid)– Running applications using United Devices– HPC training (MPI apps, tools)

• Courses offered through CS department– High Performance Computing for scientists (this semester)– Grid Computing in science and engineering (summer ‘05)

• CIT planning to provide educational content about UT Grid research applications

NMI Experiences• TACC has benefited from using NMI

– Easier to install & configure components– Better documentation & support– Software is more robust since it has gone through a level of

integration testing– Exposure to new components (Gridsolve)– Working with other NMI Testbed members

• Although NMI components are fairly reliable– They are still evolving, and occasionally cause backward

compatibility issues (e.g. between Globus versions 3.0.2, 3.2, 3.2.1, and 4.0)

• NMI not a complete grid solution– Components do not address: scheduling, workflow,

accounting, ….

UT Grid Project Team

• Jay Boisseau• Maytal Dahan• Edward Walker• Ashok Adiga• Ashesh Sahib• CJ Barker• Akhil Seth• David Walling• Eric Roberts• Jeff Mausolf (IBM)• Nina Wilner (IBM)

Texas Advanced Computing Centerwww.tacc.utexas.edu

(512) 475-9411