Advanced Campus Services
Information Systems & Technology
Georgia State University
P. O. Box 3968
Atlanta, Georgia 30302-3968
Phone +1 404 463 9685
Email: avandenberg@gsu.edu
GRID Group @ GSU
Minutes of Meeting, May 13, 2003
1:00pm - 2:20pm, Classroom South 514
Present: Victor Bolet (IS&T, Advanced Campus Services), Anu Bourgeois (Computer Science - Yamacraw), Carola Butler (Physics & Astronomy), Erdogan Dogdu (Computer Science - Yamacraw), Bill Harrison (Computer Science & Engineering, Oregon Graduate Institute), Rob Harrison (Computer Science), Xiaochun He (Physics & Astronomy), Jan Isley (Physics & Astronomy), David McBride (IS&T - University Educational Technology Support),
Gobinda C. Mishra (Physics & Astronomy), Yi Pan (Computer Science - Yamacraw), Gus Petitt (Physics & Astronomy), Hakmana Sanjeewa (Physics & Astronmony), Chris Shaw (GVU Center, Georgia Tech), Vijay Vaishnavi (Computer Information Systems), Art Vandenberg (IS&T, Advanced Campus Services), Hao Wang (Biology), Xiaorong Wang (Physics & Astronomy), Yuan-Fang Wang (Biology), Irene Weber (Biology),
Handout : Globus Toolkit and other grid components
Purpose : Identify issues of, and applications suited for, GRID infrastructure for GSU.
1. Review NMI GRID Components : We reviewed Globus ToolkitT, Condor-G, Network Weather Service, OpenSSH, and MPICH-G2 components of the NSF Middleware Initiative (NMI) Integration Testbed Program ( http://www.nsf-middleware.org/NMIR3/components.asp ). GSU is a Testbed program participant with Advanced Campus Services evaluating and deploying components. Components should be considered in the context of applications.
2. How to apply NMI GRID at GSU : Discussion of potential application of GRID components elicited the following status notes, observations and comments:
Physics & Astronomy:
Dr. He's lab has installed Globus Toolkit 3 (alpha release: http://www.globus.org/ ) on two Linux platforms (Redhat 8.0 and 7.3). Two additional platforms with Redhat 9.0 are being planned. A goal by end of summer is to have several computer nodes in local high schools. (Equipment requirements important. options?) This is related to the "Quarknet" project ( http://quarknet.fnal.gov/ ) of which GSU is a 2003 Center (see Active Quarknet Centers : http://quarknet.fnal.gov/centers.shtml ).
Particle Physics Data Grid ( http://www.ppdg.net/ ) participation is important for future work, such as participation in CERN activities. Dr. He has a PPDG RA certificate (how does this work with NMI certificates?) and is interested in PPDG work related to cataloging of millions of data files to provide efficient access for analysis and extract. Such capability is expected less than 2 years from now; GSU should be ready.
Computer Science:
Dr. Harrison pointed out that Grid certificates and security model impact potential applications. An important aspect of NMI GRID components is confidence in their security approach. Review and testing of the OpenSSH solution is important.
Dr. Harrison noted that he could test the MPICH-G2 component as for compliance with MPI and performance. He has existing MPI implementations (as well as some OpenMP (see http://www.openmp.org/ ) that might be used as a basis for comparison.
Dr. Pan observed that the question is related to "What applications are suitable for a GRID?" One aspect of a GRID is providing access to multiple, parallel resources, but can the application, in fact, benefit from parallel processing? Molecular and cellular simulations may benefit from grid processing, but visualization per se may not. Though Dr. Harrison noted that highly interactive visualization may benefit from the Grid.
Biology:
Dr. Weber concurred that the visualization in protein model research, but that the analysis processing requires lots of intervention - providing a challenge to effective Grid implementation.
Additionally, given the nature of her research, confidence in the security model is a pre-requisite to considering Grid solutions.
Physics & Astronomy:
· Dr. He illustrated the same issue with the muon detector project: A single cosmic ray shower event may take 5-6 minutes of processing time for simulation analysis; to account for geomagnetic fields, 10-20 minutes may be needed; if each second, 100,000 events occur, one needs a managed way to invoke parallel remote resources to run simulations.
Computer Information Systems:
Vandenberg noted that he, Dr. Vaishnavi, Dr. Shaw and others are working with monitoring, clustering, and visualization of directory metadata and data objects - which, if applied at a scale of "all directories in the State of Georgia or Internet2 community" may also require a Grid enabled solution.
3. Resources needed - Action Items
Given the preceding discussions, the consensus was that GRID Group @ GSU's purpose was to:
Build effective GRID infrastructure
Identify applications that can benefit from GRIDs
Attract and retain faculty and students
Foster research activities and opportunities
Encourage funding
ACTION ITEMS : The group summarized the following action items from the meeting:
