11.1 Grid Portals ITCS 4010 Grid Computing, 2005, UNC-Charlotte, B. Wilkinson.

11.2 Grid Portal “A web-based application server enhanced with the necessary software to communicate to grid services and resources” “Provides application scientist a customized view of software and hardware resources from a web browser” [1] [1] “Grid Computing Making the Global Infrastructure a Reality” ed. F. Berman, G. C. Fox and A. J. G. Hey, Wiley, 2003, Chapter 27 “The Grid portal development kit” by J. Novotny.

11.3 From a paper “GridSphere: A Portal Framework For Building Collaborations” by J. Novotny, M. Russell, and O. Wehrens

11.4 Grid Portals Uses a Web browser interface –Can use from anywhere. Hides details of Grid middleware –Good!!

11.5 Grid Portals Provides –Access to grid information –Access to grid services –Automated execution of applications/jobs –Workflow management –File management –Single sign-on to grid resources

11.6 Access to Grid Services Security Services –management of certificates –access to virtual organization (people) Remote File Management –access to files and directories –moving files Remote job management –job submission –workflow management

11.7 Access to Information Portals also provide access to information -- anything related to tasks at hand, including communication with virtual organization. In fact, some portals started simply as informational portals in the same vein as web portals such as yahoo.

11.8 Grid Portal Toolkit History Several portal “toolkits” developed since mid-1990’s. Used for application specific grid projects, or for general-purpose grid portals

11.9 Three-tiered architecture Typical arrangement on early grid portals From: The Grid Core Technologies by M. Li and M Baker, Wiley, 2005

11.10 Proxy Credential server Commonly “myProxy” credential management system. Used to store grid credentials that can be retrieved as needed to renew credentials for long running jobs etc.

11.11 Early Portal Toolkit Examples 1990s: The Grid Portal Development Kit (GPDK) (not now supported) – Used Java Server Pages (JSPs) fro prosentation layer, and JavaBeans to access backend. NPACI Grid Portal Toolkit (Gridport) (National Partnership for Advanced Computational Infrastructure)

11.12 GridPort 2.0 –Perl-based Grid portal toolkit Ninf Portal –JSP/Java Servlet front-end –GridSpeed portal, an extension of Ninf

11.13

11.14 Application-Based Portals Portals often specialized to a particular application. –for example, grid portal for high energy physics. Portal toolkits give ability to taylor portal to application or user.

11.15 MPI program Starting job From a paper”Building GridPortals: The NPACI Grid Portal Toolkit” by M. P. Thomas and J. R. Boisseau. NPACI Hotpage Grid portal (based upon GridPort)

11.16 Adapted from slides “The NCSA Alliance Portal and the Open Grid Computing Environment Project” by D. Gannon, G. Fox, B. Plale, M. Pierce, M. Thomas, C. Severance, G. von Lazewski, and J. Alameda.

11.17 DOE Fusion Grid Portal Adapted from slides “Reuseable Grid Portral Components” by M Thomas.

11.18 Linked Environments for Atmospheric Discovery (LEAD) Adapted from slides “Reuseable Grid Portral Components” by M Thomas.

11.19 NEES – George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation –Large Installations of physical equipment for earthquake experiments and simulations –Part of the award is to make equipment available for remote collaborators Focus is on collaboration and experimental equipment sharing in addition to access to computation From slides “The NCSA Alliance Portal and the Open Grid Computing Environment Project” by D. Gannon, G. Fox, B. Plale, M. Pierce, M. Thomas, C. Severance, G. von Lazewski, and J. Alameda.

11.20 Network for Earthquake Eng. and Simulation (NEESGrid) Adapted from slides “Reuseable Grid Portral Components” by M Thomas.

11.21 Early grid portals “tools” not very flexible. Tied to specific programming tools and grid software, such as Globus 2.4. Specific programming structure not suitable for users to develop portals themselves. Not standardized APIs.

11.22 Portal Implementation Should be flexible, meet grid industry standards, be able to be extended using parts developed by others. General approach currently is to use “software components” called portlets.

11.23 Software Component Object defined by precise public interface and includes a set of standard behaviors. Software components contained in a framework. Components follow a set of rules to interoperate. Installation of components should be easily done.

11.24 Portals with Portlets Portal server consists of portlets Each portlet provides certain functionality and a window within the portal. Each portlet can be associated with a particular grid service User can have any number of portlets as he/she wishes (will be associated with user’s persistent context).

11.25 Portlets provided for: –Management of user proxy certificates –Remote file Management via Grid FTP –News/Message systems for collaborations –Grid Event/Logging service –Access to OGSA services –Access to directory services –Specialized Application Factory access Distributed applications Workflow –Access to Metadata Index tools User searchable index

11.26 Portal Server MyProxy Server Metadata Directory Service(s) Directory & index Services Application Factory Services Messaging and group collaboration Event and logging Services Portal Server Adapted from slides “The NCSA Alliance Portal and the Open Grid Computing Environment Project” by D. Gannon, G. Fox, B. Plale, M. Pierce, M. Thomas, C. Severance, G. von Lazewski, and J. Alameda.

11.27 Portlet Approach to Grid Services Portal Server MyProxy Server Metadata Directory Service(s) Directory & index Services Application Factory Services Messaging and group collaboration Event and logging Services Portlet 1 Portlet 2 Portlet 3 Portlet 4 Portlet 5 Portlet 6 Adapted from slides “The NCSA Alliance Portal and the Open Grid Computing Environment Project” by D. Gannon, G. Fox, B. Plale, M. Pierce, M. Thomas, C. Severance, G. von Lazewski, and J. Alameda.

11.28 A Pane and portlet Proxy Manager Portlet The current Visible pane Adapted from slides “The NCSA Alliance Portal and the Open Grid Computing Environment Project” by D. Gannon, G. Fox, B. Plale, M. Pierce, M. Thomas, C. Severance, G. von Lazewski, and J. Alameda.

11.29 Advantages of Portlet Approach Easy to add new grid services and reconfigure user’s view (context) Different software developers can provide portals to be plugged into portal –Many parties developing portal and portlet tools -- Jetspeed (Apache), Websphere (IBM), GridSphere, … Portal/portlet standard called JSR 168 emerging (portlet Java Specification Request open standard).

11.30 Portal Layout

11.31 National Science Foundation Middleware Initiative (NMI) Started in 2001 initially over 3 years “to create and deploy advanced network services that simplify access to diverse Internet information and services.” Provides a centralized location for important grid software. Current NMI package includes Globus, Condor, MPI-G2, and: – a new grid portal project called OGCEGrid (funding started Sept 2003).

11.32 Consortium established “Fall 2003 to foster collaborations and shareable components with portal developers worldwide” The following screenshots taken from

11.33 Membership: Join/participate in different topic groups (Group tabs across top).

11.34 Schedule: Maintain a personal or group calendar.

11.35 Resources: Users and groups can upload/share documents and URLs.

11.36 Discussion: Participate in discussions with other members of your group

11.37 Chat: Engage other members of your group in online discussion.

11.38 Proxy Manager and Job Submit: Obtain/manage Grid credentials to access Grid resources through browser. Also shown are GRAM job launchers and sample "ping" portlet.

11.39 LDAP Browser: Navigate LDAP server of your choice.

11.40 Grid FTP: Use your credential to browse remote directories/upload/download files.

11.41 Grid Context: Store arbitrary web objects (movies, web pages, audio files) in a customizable, annotated directory tree.

11.42 GridPort Information Repository Portlets: Several GPIR portlets available for browsing.

11.43 GridPort Job Sequencing Portlets To set up sequences of jobs through a scheduler.

11.44 Anabas Impromptu: real time shared display, audio, and chats.

11.45 Newsgroups: Portlets allow users to participate in/administer online newsgroup.

11.46 OGRE Demo: use of OGRE for job management.

11.47 Java CoG Workflow: Portlet allows you to set up a Java CoG-based Workflow.

11.48 Application Management: Example interface around MyProxy, GRAM, and GridFTP.

11.49 Condor Portlets: To submit and monitor jobs through Condor.

11.50 More Information on portals Books: “Grid Computing Making the Global Infrastructure a Reality” ed. F. Berman, G. C. Fox and A. J. G. Hey, Wiley, 2003 –[1] Chapter 27 “The Grid portal development kit” by J. Novotny. –[2] Chapter 28 “Building grid computing portals: the NPACI grid portal toolkit” by M. P. Thomas and J. R. Boisseau

11.51 More Information JSR 168 Portlet specification GridLab, The GridSphere Portal Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation Grid (NEESGrid)

11.52 Would anyone like to develop a portal for teaching grid computing (using OGCE toolkit)? Paid ($$$) ?

11.53 Would anyone like to develop a portal for new EPA/UNC-C/UNC-A VisualGrid project (using OGCE toolkit)? Paid ($$$$$$) ?