jGMA: A Reference Implementation of the Grid Monitoring Architecture

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jGMA A Reference Implementation of the Grid
Monitoring Architecture
Matthew Grove DSG Seminar 19th November 2004
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Outline

• Introduction and motivation,
• Reintroducing the jGMA architecture,
• Interactive demonstrations,
• jGMAs current status and outstanding issues,
• Future work,
• Summary.

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Introduction and Motivation

• GridRM is
• A generic resource monitoring system basically
  a framework for gathering data from heterogeneous
  data sources.
• A scalable means of monitoring resources
  distributed over the Grid.
• GridRM is made up of local and global layers.
• GridRM needed a standards-based transport layer
  to bind together these sites at the global layer.
• A GMA-based transport appeared to be the best
  candidate.

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GridRM
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GMA Components

• Registry

• Publish/Search

• Publish/Search

• Bind

• Producer

• Consumer

• Events

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jGMA Requirements

• Compliant to the GMA specification,
• Small well defined API,
• Minimal number of other installation
  dependencies,
• Simple to install and configure,
• Use Java technologies, and fulfil GridRM's needs,
  
• Support both non-blocking and blocking events,
• Designed to work locally over a LAN or over a
  wide-area such as the Internet,
• Fast, and have a minimal impact on its hosts,
• Scalable,
• Choice of registry service,
• Able to work through firewalls.

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Current jGMA Architecture
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Interactive Demos

• Webcam Browser - Intended to be a permanent
  online demo of jGMA.
• CamMon - A more visually impressive demo for use
  at presentations (initially created for SC 2004
  in Pittsburgh).

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Webcam Browser Features

• An interactive, graphical interface to consumers
  and producers running within the jGMA framework.
• Accessed using a normal web browser.
• Producers fetch images from web cams either
  directly or via HTTP.
• Consumers can discover and retrieve these
  pictures using jGMA and display them.  

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Webcam Browser Demo

• http//dsg.port.ac.uk/projects/jGMA/demos/web/

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CamMon Features

• Uses the jGMA framework to discover and subscribe
  to video producers.
• The remote video producers stream frames in
  parallel to jGMA consumers which are embedded
  within a full screen Java application.
• Designed to be visually impressive while
  stressing the jGMA software by delivering many
  messages (the video frames) for sustained
  periods.

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CamMon Demo
http//dsg.port.ac.uk/projects/jGMA/demos/cammon/
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Current Status

• LAN (socket) layer complete,
• WAN (HTTP) layer needs to made aware of jGMA
  error messages to be complete,
• The demo applications and benchmarking has
  thoroughly tested the software,
• Inter-site leasing is missing, but this problem
  has been moved to the registry,
• Permanent online demo.

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Future Work

• Virtual Registry,
• Monitoring via Servlet,
• Hooks for debugging,
• Being deployed in GridRM,
• Completing the leasing infrastructure,
• Adding security (HTTPS, Authentication and Access
  Control, Secure API),
• Start developing distributed gaming services.

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Virtual Registry
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Virtual Registry Requirements

• Be scalable,
• Store sufficient information to be GMA compliant.
• Be secure, and prevent unauthorised access to the
  data,
• Require a minimal amount of configuration,
• Have no single point of failure,
• Be robust and tolerant to poor network access,
• Be optimised to return search results as quickly
  as possible,
• Have persistent storage for the registry back-end.

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Distributed Gaming

• Online distributed gaming has become increasingly
  popular with the wide spread uptake of broadband.
  
• Games publishers have each tried to provide an
  infrastructure to support their online games.
• There is an opportunity to develop a standard set
  of services, based on a completed jGMA
  implementation, to support these games.

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Distributed Gaming Services

• Searching The user client requires a scalable
  service to index large numbers of game servers
  and allow searches based on user-defined
  parameters such as the current map being played.
• Monitoring servers Infrastructure to detect
  problems with game servers such as large numbers
  of players can allow the system to load balance
  or fail over (migrate).
• Single sign-on Providing a unique identity for
  each player makes global high score tables and
  other statistic tracking possible. User profiles
  (key bindings) could be stored server side to
  allow roaming.
• Security Authentication and authorisation have
  become serious problems in recent years.

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Summary

• jGMA is functional despite a few missing
  features,
• There is now a permanent online demo,
• The research, in the short term will focus on
  solving the registry problem.
• Longer term we shall look at a range of games
  services.

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Acknowledgements

• University of Portsmouth,
• Members of the DSG
• Mark Baker,
• Hong Ong,
• Garry Smith,
• Mr Boe-akis,
• Aamir Shafi,
• Helen Xaing.

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Links

• Project Web page
• http//dsg.port.ac.uk/projects/jGMA/
• The DSG Web page
• http//dsg.port.ac.uk/
• GridRM
• http//gridrm.org/