Grid Computing Activities within the Department of Computer Science at UNC-Charlotte ITSC 8110 Introduction to Information Technology Research 7:30 pm, Wednesday, Nov 1, 2006 Barry Wilkinson Department of Computer Science UNC-Charlotte

Outline Brief description of grid computing Activities: Supercomputing 2003 conference demonstration Grid Computing Course (2004- ) VisualGrid Project (2005- ) SURAGrid

“The grid virtualizes heterogeneous geographically disperse resources” from "Introduction to Grid Computing with Globus," IBM Redbooks  Using geographically distributed and interconnected computers together for computing and for resource sharing. Grid Computing

Usually, involves teams working together on a common goal, sharing computing resources and possibly experimental equipment. Crosses multiple administrative domains. Geographically distributed grid computing team called a virtual organization.

Applications  Originally e-Science applications – Computational intensive Not necessarily one big problem but a problem that has to be solved repeatedly with different parameters. – Data intensive. – Experimental collaborative projects  Now also e-Business applications to improve business models and practices.

Supercomputing 2003 Demonstration  First personal contact with grid computing (November 2003).  Participant in Supercomputing 2003 demo organized by the University of Melbourne (Raj Buyya).  21 countries, numerous sites.

Grid Computing Course  Taught on North Carolina Research and Education televideo network that connects all 16 state campuses and also private institutions  Fall 2004: 8 sites  Fall 2005: 12 sites  Undergraduate/graduate Course Home Page ITCS4010F05  To be offered Spring 2007

Participating Sites, Fall 2005 Participating UNC campuses Private institutions Wake Tech. Community College Lenoir Rhyne College Elon University

Fall 2005 Course grid structure MCNCUNC-WUNC-ANCSUWCUUNC-CASU CA Backup facility, not actually used

Some Publications B. Wilkinson and C. Ferner, “Teaching Grid Computing across North Carolina Part II,” IEEE Distributed Systems Online, vol 7, no 7, B. Wilkinson and C. Ferner, “Teaching Grid Computing across North Carolina Part I,” IEEE Distributed Systems Online, vol 7, no 6, M. A. Holliday, B. Wilkinson, and J. Ruff, “Using an End-to-End Demonstration in an Undergraduate Grid Computing Course,” ACMSE 2006: 44th ACM Southeast Conference, March 10-12, 2006, Melbourne, Florida. B. Wilkinson, M. Holliday, and C. Ferner, “Experiences in Teaching a Geographically Distributed Undergraduate Grid Computing Course,” Workshop, IEEE Int. Symp. Cluster Computing and the Grid (CCGrid2005), Cardiff, UK, May , B. Wilkinson and M. Holliday, “State-Wide Collaborative Grid Computing Course,” 2005 Teaching and Learning with Technology Conference, March 30, 2005, Raleigh, NC. M. A. Holliday, B. Wilkinson, J. House, S. Daoud, and C. Ferner, “A Geographically-Distributed, Assignment-Structured Undergraduate Grid Computing Course,” SIGCSE 2005 Tech. Symp. on Computer Science Education, St. Louis, Missouri, February , 2005.

National Publicity Science Grid This Week Feature story Gridtoday.com

VisualGrid Project  Goal: Collaborative environmental visualization research using a grid computing infrastructure  Started Jan 2006  Involves two sites: – UNC-Charlotte – UNC-Asheville  plus Environment Protection Agency, Raleigh, NC (funding agency) EPA

Project Structure at UNC-C (Virtual Organization)  Visualization Charlotte Visualization Center Bill Ribrasky, Bank of America Endowed Chair of Information Technology (VisualGrid PI) Aidong Lu, Asst. Professor of Computer Science  Environmental Studies Global Inst. of Energy & Environmental Syst. Hilary Inyang, Duke Energy Distinguished Professor Sunyoung Bae, Research Associate Grid Infrastructure Barry Wilkinson, Professor of Computer Science

VisualGrid Infrastructure Group: Goal: To create a geographically distributed set of resources and facilitate collaboration between VisualGrid researchers. Team: Barry Wilkinson Jeremy Villalobos (MS student) Nikul Suthar (MS Student) Keyur Sheth (MS student) Jasper Land (BS student) Department of Computer Science UNC-Charlotte Infrastructure Support 52-node University Research Cluster Chuck Price, Director of University Research Computing Mike Mosley, Senior Systems Developer

Development System (Four 3.4 Ghz dual Xeons) visualgrid.uncc.edu Visualization lab data server (4 Tbytes) Compute resources 52-node (104 processor) University Research Cluster Software: Globus 4.0, Condor. CA Certificate Authority UNC-Charlotte resources UNC-Asheville resources transylvania.tr.cs.unca.edu (8-node system) VisualGrid Configuration VisualGrid portal

National Attention Listed as one of the portals to use OGCE2

 X509 certificates used to provide security in a grid system.  Each user needs a certificate issued by a “certificate authority” (CA).  Grid systems use a so-called user proxy certificates to allow resources to control resources on the user’s behalf. X509 Certificates

CA’s with Mutual Trust UNC-C CA UNC-A CA GT4

Multiple Grid Nodes With multiple grid nodes, users need:  Account on each system, and access control set accordingly.  A certificate acceptable by the local certificate authority (i.e. signed by a CA it trusts)

Getting an account Go to portal and select “register” New User VisualGrid on-line registration form CA/System Administrator Create accounts, set access control, sign certificate, … Fill in form Provide password and other information Request Confirmation Acknowledgement Contact other grid resource administrators if users requests account on their resource

UNC-Asheville Bioinformatics hardware accelerator 52-node UNC-Charlotte university research cluster UNC-C Dept of CS grid computing development system 4TB Windows 2003 data server reached through coit-grid02.uncc.edu (samba mount)

Sample VisualGrid portlets One CMAQ script editing portlet CMAQ portlet, main page CMAQ settings portlet Tabs for various CMAQ actions

VisualGrid Links VisualGrid Infrastructure group page VisualGrid portal VisualGrid Portal User’s Guide wiki

Other work: Collaboration with SURAGrid  Develop and offer Grid course(s) using SURAGrid – Crosses state boundaries.  Integrate EE bioinformatics accelerator into SURAGrid (possible)

Acknowledgements Partial support for the work described here was provided by the National Science Foundation, University of North Carolina Office of the President, and Environmental Protection Agency. National Science Foundation, “Introducing Grid Computing into the Undergraduate Curricula,” ref. DUE , PI: A. B. Wilkinson, co-PI’s Mark Holliday and D. Luginbuhl, $100,000, , Additional Funding,” ref. DUE , PI: B. Wilkinson, $8216, University of North Carolina Office of President, “A Consortium to Promote Computational Science and High Performance Computing,” PI: B. Kurtz (Appalachian State University) co-PIs: B. Berg, W. Campbell, W. Hightower, M. Holliday, J. Hollingworth, R. Hull, D-H Hwang, S. Lea, Y. Li, S. V. Providence, D. Powell, R. Shore, S. Suthaharan, R. Tashakkori, and B. Wilkinson, total $650,000, University of North Carolina Office of President, “Fostering Undergraduate Research Partnerships through a Graphical User Environment for the North Carolina Computing Grid,” PI: R. Vetter (UNC- Wilmington), co-PIs: L. Bartolotii, D. R. Berman, R. Boston, J. Brown, C. Ferner, T. Hudson, T. Janicki, N. Martin, M. McClelland, J. Porter, A. Stapleton, and B. Wilkinson, total $557,634, Environmental Protection Agency, “Proposal to Establish the VisualGrid” PI W. Ribarsky, co-PIs S. Bae, B. Wilkinson, H. Inyang, A. Lu, $485,000, 01/02/ /31/2006.

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