December 8 & 9, 2005, Austin, TX SURA Cyberinfrastructure Workshop Series: Grid Technology: The Rough Guide User Interfaces to Grids Patrick Hurley Texas Advanced Computing Center

December 8 & 9, 2005, Austin, TX SURA Cyberinfrastructure Workshop Series: Grid Technology: The Rough Guide Overview Grid Interaction: Command Line vs. GUI Command Line Interfaces (CLIs) Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) Web Interface Example: GridPort Desktop Application Example: GridChem

December 8 & 9, 2005, Austin, TX SURA Cyberinfrastructure Workshop Series: Grid Technology: The Rough Guide Grid Interaction: CLI vs. GUI CLIs Expose the full spectrum of application options. Available to anyone with local access to the resource. Still efficient for repetitive tasks, complex workflows, and active developers. May be a “barrier of entry” to grid resources and services.

December 8 & 9, 2005, Austin, TX SURA Cyberinfrastructure Workshop Series: Grid Technology: The Rough Guide Grid Interaction: CLI vs. GUI GUIs Ideally lift the “barrier of entry” to grid resources and services. Abstract behind-the-scenes details. Do not require direct access to grid resources. Augment CLIs with well-formatted information. Efficient and intuitive UIs for large-scale, complex workflows are difficult to design.

December 8 & 9, 2005, Austin, TX SURA Cyberinfrastructure Workshop Series: Grid Technology: The Rough Guide Grid Interaction: CLI vs. GUI Is one hands down better than the other? No. (IMHO) As users, project leaders, and communities, you should decide what works best for you.

December 8 & 9, 2005, Austin, TX SURA Cyberinfrastructure Workshop Series: Grid Technology: The Rough Guide Native Grid Application CLIs GSI-SSH, MyProxy LSF, PBS, Condor, SGE MonALISA, Ganglia UberFTP …and more!

December 8 & 9, 2005, Austin, TX SURA Cyberinfrastructure Workshop Series: Grid Technology: The Rough Guide Grid Toolkit CLIs Globus Native grid application CLIs included. Additional Globus-specific CLIs: –Data Management: globus-url-copy –Execution Management: globusrun-ws

December 8 & 9, 2005, Austin, TX SURA Cyberinfrastructure Workshop Series: Grid Technology: The Rough Guide GridShell ( Extends the Tenex C Shell (TCSH) and Bourne Again Shell (BASH) to transparently include distributed and grid computing functionality in order to provide a “write-once run-anywhere” environment, including: –Job submission to local or remote clusters. –Standard out and standard error redirection to remote file locations. –Parallel script execution with inter-task communication and synchronization.

December 8 & 9, 2005, Austin, TX SURA Cyberinfrastructure Workshop Series: Grid Technology: The Rough Guide GridShell: Examples Redirecting standard out to a remote file location using GlobusFTP: a.out > gsiftp://bandera.tacc.utexas.edu/work/data Executing two parallel tasks: a.out on 2 procs Message passing between parallel tasks: if ( $_GRID_TASKID > 0) then echo “Done.” > task_0 end if

December 8 & 9, 2005, Austin, TX SURA Cyberinfrastructure Workshop Series: Grid Technology: The Rough Guide Grid Interaction: GUIs Web-based Interfaces –Open Grid Computing Environment ( –GridSphere Grid Portlets ( –GridPort Toolkit ( Desktop Applications –GridChem Computational Chemistry Grid ( –Extensible Computational Chemistry Environment ( –GEMSTONE (

December 8 & 9, 2005, Austin, TX SURA Cyberinfrastructure Workshop Series: Grid Technology: The Rough Guide Grid Interaction: Web Interfaces Grid Portals Accessible from anywhere using only a standard web browser. Easily customizable for specific communities or tasks. Grid portal toolkits available to simplify development and deployment. Not as feature-rich as desktop applications.

December 8 & 9, 2005, Austin, TX SURA Cyberinfrastructure Workshop Series: Grid Technology: The Rough Guide Grid Portals Linked Environments for Atmospheric Discovery (LEAD) (

December 8 & 9, 2005, Austin, TX SURA Cyberinfrastructure Workshop Series: Grid Technology: The Rough Guide Grid Portals North Carolina BioPortal (

December 8 & 9, 2005, Austin, TX SURA Cyberinfrastructure Workshop Series: Grid Technology: The Rough Guide GridPort – What Is It? GridPort is a simple, easy-to-install software package that allows developers in the scientific research community and industry to create portals to access grid infrastructure via a web interface, which serves as a starting point for building custom grid portals — all in a lightweight, modular, easy-to-use package.

December 8 & 9, 2005, Austin, TX SURA Cyberinfrastructure Workshop Series: Grid Technology: The Rough Guide GridPort Composition The GridPort Portal –Portlet components provide basic grid access and capabilities including: grid authentication batch job submission grid job submission file management data management (coming soon) –One-step install process with the GridSphere Portal Framework into a Tomcat web server –Easy to pick and choose software components you want to install

December 8 & 9, 2005, Austin, TX SURA Cyberinfrastructure Workshop Series: Grid Technology: The Rough Guide

December 8 & 9, 2005, Austin, TX SURA Cyberinfrastructure Workshop Series: Grid Technology: The Rough Guide GridPort: Authentication Single Sign-on authentication modules –MyProxy –GridPort Credential Repository MyProxy portlet interface –Developed by OGCE

December 8 & 9, 2005, Austin, TX SURA Cyberinfrastructure Workshop Series: Grid Technology: The Rough Guide Related Services: GPIR Grid Portal Information Repository (GPIR) –Storage and retrieval of grid data with Web service interfaces –Relational database for caching and archiving grid data –Web services manage database transactions Information providers push data to the Ingester Web Service Clients such as portals pull data from the Query Web Service

December 8 & 9, 2005, Austin, TX SURA Cyberinfrastructure Workshop Series: Grid Technology: The Rough Guide Related Services: CFT Comprehensive File Transfer (CFT) –Developed at TACC File management web service –Manage 3rd-party transfers between grid resources –Query status of transfers including transfer completion ratio

December 8 & 9, 2005, Austin, TX SURA Cyberinfrastructure Workshop Series: Grid Technology: The Rough Guide GridPort: Grid Information Portlet Acquires and displays grid information from GPIR service including: –Load, Status, Job Queues, Machine Information Can display information for the following resource types: –HPC –Visualization –Storage –PC Grid

December 8 & 9, 2005, Austin, TX SURA Cyberinfrastructure Workshop Series: Grid Technology: The Rough Guide GridPort: File Management Portlet Configurable to use either GridFTP or CFT web service for file transfers Convenient source/destination view for listing, viewing, and transferring files Can view file transfer status (CFT only) and use NWS data to predict transfer times between resources.

December 8 & 9, 2005, Austin, TX SURA Cyberinfrastructure Workshop Series: Grid Technology: The Rough Guide GridPort: Job Submission Portlet Submits batch jobs using Globus GRAM Allows specification of executable, input/ouput files, and many other parameters View job submission status

December 8 & 9, 2005, Austin, TX SURA Cyberinfrastructure Workshop Series: Grid Technology: The Rough Guide GridPort: Grid Job Submission Portlet Submits jobs using condor metascheduler Uses Condor schedd web service (SOAP) interface Upload or specify remote executable and input files Specify job parameters View job status

December 8 & 9, 2005, Austin, TX SURA Cyberinfrastructure Workshop Series: Grid Technology: The Rough Guide GridPort: Data Management Portlet Interfaces with Storage Resource Broker (SRB) data management software Uses AJAX for interactive data browsing of data repositories Will be available in the next GridPort release (v4.0.1) Developed at SDSU by Mary Thomas, et al.

December 8 & 9, 2005, Austin, TX SURA Cyberinfrastructure Workshop Series: Grid Technology: The Rough Guide GridPort: In Use By… TeraGrid User Portal SURAgrid Portal TIGRE User Portal UTGrid / TACC User Portal … and others.

December 8 & 9, 2005, Austin, TX SURA Cyberinfrastructure Workshop Series: Grid Technology: The Rough Guide GridPort: The Team TACC –Eric Roberts (project leader, developer) –Maytal Dahan (developer) –Patrick Hurley (developer) –Jay Boisseau (contributor) SDSU –Mary Thomas (contributor) –Turan Bansal (student developer) –Tushar Gupta (student developer) –Dave Thomas (student developer) Contributors –Freddy Rojas - CeCalCULA (Merida, Venezuela) (tester, application portlet interfaces)

December 8 & 9, 2005, Austin, TX SURA Cyberinfrastructure Workshop Series: Grid Technology: The Rough Guide GridPort: Contacts and Resources The GridPort Toolkit: – Installation and Portal Demos: – – Project Leader: –Eric Roberts Developer: –Patrick Hurley

December 8 & 9, 2005, Austin, TX SURA Cyberinfrastructure Workshop Series: Grid Technology: The Rough Guide Grid Interaction: Desktop Applications Provide a single-package installation for grid users. Provide a consistent grid environment and interface for all users. Allow for advanced development beyond the constraints of web interfaces. Requires development time. … just ask Kent!