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A Portlet Interface for Computational Electromagnetics on the Grid Maria Lin and David Walker Cardiff University

Project Collaborators Cardiff University Swansea University BAE Systems HP Singapore Institute of HPC

Outline Project Overview and Challenges Design Gecem Portal and Portlets Portal and Security Use Case Future Work Conclusion

Project Objective Develop a user-friendly environment for users to integrate mesh generation, large-scale linear system solver, and collaborative visualization within a Web service framework. Problem domain is computational electromagnetics

GECEM Prototype Grid Geometry data UWS WeSC Other locations BAE SYSTEMS Create geometry Generate mesh CEM simulation MeshOutput

GECEM Production Grid Other locations Geometry data UWS Singapore BAE SYSTEMS Create geometry Generate mesh CEM simulation MeshOutput

Challenges Resources are intrinsically distributed –No sharing of software and hardware –Sharing data Requirements –Single logon to multiple machines –A user friendly interface –Secure environment –Support Multi-user

Previous Work Use a shell-script to call Global Toolkit 2.0 User account handling is complex Not user-friendly

Current Approach Use a portlet approach Use GridSphere Portal framework Use portlet service models provided by GridPortlets Create GECEM portlets to locate input files and services and to submit jobs

Portlet Design Programmed in Java User-interface component Handles user requests and generates dynamic content in the form of markup fragments that can be aggregated with other fragments to form a portal page A portlet is a window to provide a specific service Easy to customize for individual users or groups of users

Portlets Visible active components users see within their portal pages Java servlet inside a portal A special type of servlets –The Portlet API extends and subclasses the Servlet API

GridSphere Provide a portlet container Provide user management, session management, and group management Provide support for role-based access control Provide portlet subscription Provide layout selection Allow third-party portlet

Grid Portlets Resource Browser Portlet –Resource Registry Credential Retrieval Portlet –Credential Management uses credential repository to store user credentials Provide File Browser Portlet Easy to use for invoking OGSA Reliable File Transfer (RFT) Service

GECEM portlets Select machine for mesh services and solver service Select geometry file from a list of machines Invoke OGSA grid service for job submission

GECEM Portal Supports surface mesh generation Supports volume mesh generation Supports CEM solver migration Supports collaborative visualisation and analysis

Aspects Accessbility of CEM solver codes –High quality –Significant investments of time and money –Owner may not want to install codes permanently on computers outside of their organisation

CEM solver service Support migration of codes to a target machine execute Send output to solution archive Delete codes and data sets

Workflow Surface Mesh service Volume Mesh Service CEM Solver Service Geometry data Geometry Archive Surface Mesh Archive Volume mesh archive Solution archive Solution data

Portal and Security Based on Globus Security Infrastructure for authentication Provides single sign-on –Use grid credentials –Use proxy certificate –Use MyProxy Credential Repository –Use MyProxy Upload Tool

Logon using MyProxy User upload their credential to a MyProxy Server User Logon the Gecem Portal using the MyProxy username and passphrase Login Portlet retrieves the credential from the MyProxy Server and creates a credential mapping for the user GridPortlet stores the credential into a credential repository

Design GECEM portal CEM Solver Service Volume Mesh Service Surface Mesh Service Archives MyProxy Server

Use Case Mesh Service Geometry Data files Meshes Solver control files Migrate Solver Service BAE Swansea WeSC Solver Output Solver

Current Version Use Gridsphere as the portlet- based portal Use Gridportlets (cvs version)

Software Prerequisite Software –Java 2 Standard Edition version or higher. –Tomcat –Apache Ant version –Globus Toolkit (GT3.2.1)

Related Work Geodise toolkit P-GRADE GEMLCA

Work In Progress Archiving results Use UDDI for service discovery Apply RAVE for visualization

Future Work Use workflow model Adapt our framework to WSRF Extend GECEM grid to include all project partners

Conclusion Portal provides a high-level user interface for scientists to access distributed resources easily Portal hides away the complexity of using grid User can access the portal anywhere