Collaborative Tools for the Grid V.N Alexandrov S. Mehmood Hasan
Outline Introduction eMinerals Project Requirements for the eMinerals Project Our experiences Proposed work Aims for the longer term
eMinerals Project Environment from the molecular level 7 Academic institutions UK-wide Project team consists of Scientists Application Developers Grid Experts Extremely heterogeneous grid containing parallel machines, Linux boxes, Condor pools
Requirements for the eMinerals Project Need for greater inter-institute collaboration Requirement for team members to communicate (Scientist, Application developers, & Grid experts) Joint problem solving, code development etc. Joint analysis of results Arrange and conduct meetings, informal chats etc
Collaborative Computing Frameworks (CCF) Developed by Emory University in collaboration with The University of Reading Suite of software systems, communication protocols and tools Enables the construction of efficient & flexible collaboratories Facilitate sharing of applications and resources Builds a virtual work environment
SITE A SITE B SITE C SITE D Operational Scenario
READING CAMBRIDGE UCL eMinerals Minigrid
Motivation for our work We require inbuilt facilities for executing programs during collaborative sessions. This is particularly useful in sessions involving scientific or technical computation We require collaborative tools to discuss, visualise and analyse computational problems and results
Globus plugin for CCF Enables participants in a collaborative session to run computationally intensive jobs Allows users to create and manage their proxy certificates Exploits the functionality provided by the Globus Toolkit Security Resource Discovery Resource Allocation Data transmission
Globus plugin for CCF (2) Collaborative, distributed problem solving Collaborative code development Collaborative visualisation Collaborative analysis of results
Taking it one step further Use existing trust relationships Use GSI to authenticate participants in a session Use the firewall rules already in place for the Globus Toolkit
READING CAMBRIDGE UCL
Aims in the near future Develop a collaborative framework for the Grid Human centred communication Audio/Video conferencing tools Text chat Whiteboard/Clearboard Application Sharing
Design Requirements Platform Independent and Interoperability Scalability Flexibility Security Performance Internationality Usability Accessibility
Future Work Closely integrated with the Globus Toolkit vs. an independent application interacting with Globus Integration with Globus Toolkit 3 Grid services approach
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