1. UNICORE UNiform Interface to COmputing REsources Olga Alexandrova, TITE 3 Daniela Grudinschi, TITE 3

2. What is UNICORE? Is a Grid middleware project funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMFB), which provides a science and engineering GRID, combining resources of supercomputer centres and making them available through the Internet. It consists of a graphical interface user submits jobs in a computer and centre independent form it is an abstract job control language definition the user need not know all the details of the target at that computer site.

3. The main goal of project UNICORE To develop production quality software for a seamless secure and intuitive access to the distributed resources of the German high performance computing centres

4. Objectives of UNICORE Seamless batch access to computing resources –Intuitive GUI for batch submission –Provide full information about resources Production-ready for existing environments –Map abstract UNICORE specifications to site specific functions –Map UNICORE ids (certificates) to local account names (Unix logins ) Based on existing/emerging technologies –Access via www –X.509 certificates Access to distributed data –User specifies target system (s) –UNICORE transfers required data between sites Interdependent jobs on distributed systems –UNICORE distributes jobs to sites –UNICORE synchronizes execution

5. The UNICORE Architecture UNICORE is a client-server system Based on modern Web-technologies is realised as a three-tier architecture:  user client on the local PC is used for job preparation and monitoring  gateway authenticates both client and user, before contacting the servers  UNICORE server is the Job Supervisor with Job Management

6. The UNICORE Architecture

7. Distributed Applications Timer Process is a Super-Scheduler for synchronous start of job on multiple machines at different sites gives the possibility to start real metacomputing applications advance reservations - give the possibility to start metacomputing applications synchronously on different sites or machines job width (requested number of resources/nodes/CPUs) job length (estimated runtime) A normal UNICORE job is simply transferred to the waiting queue of the local management system.

8. Distributed Applications For every job in the system this data is given: Requested Nodes (the width) Config-Time (the proposed start time) Release-Time (duration, or the estimated runtime) With these data the Timer Process has a full view on the current and future usage of the machine

9. UNICORE Functions Creation of system-independent jobs Execution at different sites Creation of complex interdependent multi-system and multi-site jobs Monitoring and control of job Dependencies Workflow Transfer of data to and from the workstation Automatic data transfer between systems and site Access to data in Unix file systems and archives No changes to third party applications

10. UNICORE Functions Support for legacy job scripts Support for Metacomputing Performance analysis using VAMPIR No changes to local user management and naming conventions Secure communication over the Internet Support for all platforms, operating systems, and batch systems at partner sites Retaining of administrative autonomy and security policies of participating sites Basis for additional national and international projects Production quality prototype

11. The UNICORE Security Model all communication across the outside Internet is based on SSL is based on the use of permanent X.509 certificates the certificates are issued by a trusted Certificate Authority (CA) for every job the security of the other sites is provide by an enforced indorse model

12. UNICORE and OGSA Open Grid Service Architecture (OGSA) new GRID standard developed by Global Grid Forum and Industry UNICORE architecture is compatible with OGSA Encapsulation of UNICORE protocol in WEB Services has been demonstrated IBM and Fujitsu are very interested in UNICORE –IBM Grid Design Centre Montpellier –IBM Böblingen Development Laboratory –Fujitsu Laboratories Kawasaki

13. UNICORE Based Projects EUROGRID : EU-Project IST-1999-20457 –European Testbed for a Bio-, Meteo-, HPC-Grid – Interactive Access GRIP (Grid Interoperability Project): EU-Project IST- 2001-32257 - Interoperability between UNICORE and Globus OpenMolGrid: EU-Project IST-2001-37238 –Open Computing Grid for Molecular Science and Engineering using UNICORE

14. Conclusions UNICORE is available as Open Source and can be used free of charge in research projects UNICORE is well recognised internationally The software is suitable for production Grid development will benefit from experience gained at UNICORE Test and Production sites