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Information Systems & Technology
Georgia State University
P. O. Box 3968
Atlanta, Georgia 30302-3968
Phone +1 404 463 9685
Email: avandenberg@gsu.edu

Status meeting
November 13, 2003
2:00-3:30 pm
Commerce Building 110

0. Introductions and Agenda Review ( 5 min)

1. Status of Action Items (20 min)

Network connection improvement Physics Lab Dr. He

PCs for Muon Detector GRID

other items open (minutes July 18 for other open Action items)

2. NMI Integration Testbed (20 min)

Catalog of GRID activity

Funding for Intra-testbed GRID (see attached TestbedGrid22Oct2003.doc)

TACC Grid Portal (Muon Detector available via Portal... by New Year 2004?)

UVa & UMich credential work for Intra-testbed Grid

3. NSF grant proposal for Layered GRID (ITR / Cyberinfrastructure) (20 min)

Version Nov 12, 2003

4. Other GRID activity (15 min)

report from Internet2 Member Meeting (Oct 13-16) GRID topics

Globus World Presentation on NMI Intra-Testbed Grid (accepted for Jan 2004)

Startup of GSU Research and Instructional Computing initiative

5. Other items & Wrap up (10 min)

Next meeting: TBD

OPEN ACTION ITEMS :

Reference- ACM Communications, November 2003

http://www.acm.org/cacm/toc/2003/29october_toc_03.html

Blueprint for the Future of High-Performance Networking

Notes from Internet2, ACIT Rock Eagle, NMI Middleware Workshop, and Educause Conferences:

Internet2 Fall Member Meeting Oct 13-16, 2003

· Steve Carmody, Brown University - Shibboleth & Atlanta Airport

· Keith Hazelton, University of Wisconsin - Semantic Facilitator TM SM , LSA, SFA

· Michael Nelson, IBM - Web Fountain ( http://www.almaden.ibm.com/webfountain/ )

· Samir Chatterjee, Claremont Graduate School - contacts re security & CDC.

· Paul Messina, Argonne Nat'l Lab - metadata, data repositories, visualization, drill down

· Kevin Thompson, NSF, NMI Program Director (moving to cyberinfrastructure) - metadata

· Tom Garritano, Argonne , Univ. of Chicago - www.gpds.org , GRID database (Globus .)

· Jill Gemmill, University of Alabama - analysis of commObject adoption

USG Annual Computing Conference, Rock Eagle Oct 22-24, 2003

· Interest from Georgia Tech (Jon Glass, Inst Bioengineering & Bioscience

http://www.ibb.gatech.edu/ )

Beowulf Cluster (100+) ISyE (Industrial & Systems Engineering)

· David Matthews-Morgan re Grid at UGA: (maybe interest)

B.C. Wang , Structural Biology (X-ray Crystallography)

( http://www.uga.edu/cms/FacBCW.html )

Jessica Kissinger (Plasmodium Genome database)

( http://www.genetics.uga.edu/faculty/bio-kissinger.html )

Second NMI Middleware Deployment Workshop, November 3, 2003

· Ashok Adiga, TACC - Hub & Spoke model for GRID deployment; Gridport 3.0

Educause Annual Conference November 4-7, 2003

· Dr. Shirley Jackson - text mining, biotech & infotech cores; simulation in 3D of biodata; repositories; metadata

· Educause Report on Technologies - GRID computing "not there yet" (that means opportunity for those in front.?)

· Nancy Rayner, Cal State U, Long Beach - Collaboration; internal "grants" of time as model for priority setting (criteria for awards: feasible project; reusable component) ( www.csulb.edu/VOAHA Virtual Oral/Aural History web site)

· Ken Klingenstein - upcoming NMI solicitation; middleware diagnostics; network middleware (network AuthN, QoS); convergence of middleware layer; virtual organizations; OGSA; GRID (high end computing & no budget? Try GRIDs)

Following from GRID Group @ GSU Minutes July 18, 2003

[biogrid] Notes from recent GlobusWorld on biogrids

Date view Thread view Subject view Author view

From: Don Gilbert ( gilbertd@bio.indiana.edu )

Date: Tue Jan 21 2003 - 01:14:33 SGT

* Previous message: Tan Tin Wee: "[biogrid] Globus Toolkit 3.0 is now available"

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here are some notes from bioinformatics grid/biogrid perspectives of

the recent GlobusWorld conference http://www.globusworld.com/ and

its life sciences workshop, that I attended last week. Debating

with myself, should I stay there another 2 weeks for the O'Reilly

bioinfo. conference? The warm sun is a nice change from 10oF

snowstorms here in Indiana , but when they turned off the wireless

network on Thursday, I knew I couldn't survive a netless

fortnight there :)

The new Global Grid Forum lifesci. work group

http://www.gridforum.org/7_APM/LSG.htm

looks like it may be a useful, though many of those involved are

approaching life sci. from a computer industry perspective, and

could use help from bioinformatics folks steering toward our

needs for grid computing.

The gist of globusworld take home messages to me are:

-- Globus toolkit 3 (GT3) will be all OGSA, meaning WebServices,

XML messaging, with the reference/alpha implenentation

mostly in Java (Servlets/Soap/Tomcat/Jakarta/...), the

complied C parts to be copied over from GT2 or added

later. This is good from my perspective, as I have yet

to get GT2 to fully compile on MacOS X. From quick view of

docs, much of the core grid services for GT3 will run thru

Tomcat-based servlets and web services. It will be work to

change from GT2 to GT3, but if you haven't invested time in

GT2, and are not in a hurry to use, start with the alpha

GT3, just released. Read also the FAQs at

http://www.globus.org/toolkit/gt3-factsheet.html

-- My perspective on biogrids is that data grid issues are most

critically in need of work, and several lifesci. talks tended to

agree with this. One new hope from grid infrastructure is the

OGSA-DAI (data access and integration) project, which defines

data service registry, search/retrieval methods thru web

services (OGSA grid services). Still in alpha stage, it has

testable software, see http://www.ogsa-dai.org.uk/ It will form

a core part of the expanded globus 3 toolkit.

-- The globusworld lifesciences workshop had many interesting

talks. Outline at

http://www.globusworld.com/globusworld_web/ls_workshop_program.htm

where you can get better summaries.

  --- Avaki.com is doing well selling usable, data-centric grid systems

  to lifesci. companies and academics. Their product literature

  is well worth reading, and if you want to buy a usable grid for

  lifesci. now, this is probably your best bet. I think this is great,

  and shows need in bioinfo. for such; my hope is that public,

  open-source, freely usable grids for bioinfo. will catch up to

  some extent w/ Avaki's work. Esp. of interest, Avaki grids will

  become OGSA compliant, and hopefully thru this will interoperate

  with any public academic grids. It would be very good for

  our community if we can keep public and proprietary grids interoperating

  from data exchange perspectives at least.

  The way Avaki's data grid works now is to provide a 'grid file

  system' view of distributed data, and the important clue on how

  they do this is to make it work as Network File System daemon

  available on most OSes (MSWindows predominately for lifesci.

  companies).

  --- Japan has biogrid efforts underway, including an interesting

  one at http://www.biogrid.jp/ From the data perspective, they

  are working at reformatting a lot of biology databanks into a

  common XML structure (a formidable task... hope there is another

  way).

  --- Novartis now has a functioning PC Grid linking some

  2,000 PC (MSWindows) workstations, and are actively bringing

  grid computing in as an addition, eventual replacement, for

  high performance computing's centralized 'big boxes'.

  --- the eDiamond project in UK is building a very interesting

  practical biomedical grid

  for breast cancer screening and diagnosis; should be an example

  of how grid infrastructure can do important things otherwise

  not feasible. http://www.gridoutreach.org.uk/docs/pilots/ediamond.htm

  --- Singapore is building a biomedical grid using globus

  www.bii.a-star.edu.sg

  --- IBM Almaden is doing research on OptimalGrid, based on globus,

  for computational biology

  --- Protein Databank (PDB), SCSD & UCSD folks have various grid

  things for biology in progress. The NIH sponsored BIRN project

http://birn.ncrr.nih.gov/ for neurosciences and biomedical computing

  is using globus and related grid infrastructure for practical

  biocomputing.

-- Trust & security issues are big all around in grid computing,

and much will be changing in globus and related grid systems to

address this (certificates, limiting internet port/firewall problems

by putting everything behind port 80, ...)

-- some important grid issues others mentioned that resonate w/ me:

 --- moving data on grid: costly, time consuming, an unresolved issue

 --- queries and answers: no standard grid query method yet;

     SQL not good enough, XML query maybe,

 --- complexity management is a problem for usable grids

-- IBM, Microsoft, Sun, HP, Oracle, software industry in

general, financial services industry, others all have growing

interest, investments in grid, globus, and esp. OGSA/OGSI

as common framework.

-- Don Gilbert

-- d.gilbert--bioinformatics--indiana-u--bloomington-in-47405

-- gilbertd@bio.indiana.edu