Grid Portals

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Grid Portals
ITCS 4010 Grid Computing, 2005, UNC-Charlotte, B.
Wilkinson.
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Grid Portal

• A web-based application server enhanced with the
  necessary software to communicate to grid
  services and resources
• Provides application scientist a customized view
  of software and hardware resources from a web
  browser 1

1 Grid Computing Making the Global
Infrastructure a Reality ed. F. Berman, G. C.
Fox and A. J. G. Hey, Wiley, 2003, Chapter 27
The Grid portal development kit by J. Novotny.
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From a paper GridSphere A Portal Framework For
Building Collaborations by J. Novotny, M.
Russell, and O. Wehrens
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Grid Portals

• Uses a Web browser interface
• Can use from anywhere.
• Hides details of Grid middleware
• Good!!

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Grid Portals

• Provides
• Access to grid information
• Access to grid services
• Automated execution of applications/jobs
• Workflow management
• File management
• Single sign-on to grid resources

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Access to Grid Services

• Security Services
• management of certificates
• access to virtual organization (people)
• Remote File Management
• access to files and directories
• moving files
• Remote job management
• job submission
• workflow management

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Access to Information

• Portals also provide access to information --
  anything related to tasks at hand, including
  communication with virtual organization.
• In fact, some portals started simply as
  informational portals in the same vein as web
  portals such as yahoo.

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Grid Portal Toolkit History

• Several portal toolkits developed since
  mid-1990s.
• Used for application specific grid projects,
• or
• for general-purpose grid portals

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From The Grid Core Technologies by M. Li and M
Baker, Wiley, 2005
Three-tiered architecture Typical arrangement on
early grid portals
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Proxy Credential server

• Commonly myProxy credential management system.
• Used to store grid credentials that can be
  retrieved as needed to renew credentials for long
  running jobs etc.

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• Early Portal Toolkit Examples
• 1990s
• The Grid Portal Development Kit (GPDK) (not now
  supported)
• Used Java Server Pages (JSPs) fro prosentation
  layer, and JavaBeans to access backend.
• NPACI Grid Portal Toolkit (Gridport) (National
  Partnership for Advanced Computational
  Infrastructure)

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• GridPort 2.0
• Perl-based Grid portal toolkit
• Ninf Portal
• JSP/Java Servlet front-end
• GridSpeed portal, an extension of Ninf

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Application-Based Portals

• Portals often specialized to a particular
  application.
• for example, grid portal for high energy physics.
• Portal toolkits give ability to taylor portal to
  application or user.

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NPACI Hotpage Grid portal (based upon GridPort)
MPI program
Starting job
From a paperBuilding GridPortals The NPACI Grid
Portal Toolkit by M. P. Thomas and J. R.
Boisseau.
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Adapted from slides The NCSA Alliance Portal and
the Open Grid Computing Environment Project by
D. Gannon, G. Fox, B. Plale, M. Pierce, M.
Thomas, C. Severance, G. von Lazewski, and J.
Alameda.
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DOE Fusion Grid Portal
Adapted from slides Reuseable Grid Portral
Components by M Thomas.
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Linked Environments for Atmospheric Discovery
(LEAD)
Adapted from slides Reuseable Grid Portral
Components by M Thomas.
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NEES www.neesgrid.org

• George E. Brown, Jr. Network for Earthquake
  Engineering Simulation
• Large Installations of physical equipment for
  earthquake experiments and simulations
• Part of the award is to make equipment available
  for remote collaborators
• Focus is on collaboration and experimental
  equipment sharing in addition to access to
  computation

From slides The NCSA Alliance Portal and the
Open Grid Computing Environment Project by D.
Gannon, G. Fox, B. Plale, M. Pierce, M. Thomas,
C. Severance, G. von Lazewski, and J. Alameda.
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Network for Earthquake Eng. and Simulation
(NEESGrid)
Adapted from slides Reuseable Grid Portral
Components by M Thomas.
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• Early grid portals tools not very flexible.
• Tied to specific programming tools and grid
  software, such as Globus 2.4.
• Specific programming structure not suitable for
  users to develop portals themselves.
• Not standardized APIs.

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Portal Implementation

• Should be flexible, meet grid industry standards,
  be able to be extended using parts developed by
  others.
• General approach currently is to use software
  components called portlets.

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Software Component

• Object defined by precise public interface and
  includes a set of standard behaviors.
• Software components contained in a framework.
• Components follow a set of rules to interoperate.
• Installation of components should be easily done.

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Portals with Portlets

• Portal server consists of portlets
• Each portlet provides certain functionality and
  a window within the portal.
• Each portlet can be associated with a particular
  grid service
• User can have any number of portlets as he/she
  wishes (will be associated with users persistent
  context).

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• Portlets provided for
• Management of user proxy certificates
• Remote file Management via Grid FTP
• News/Message systems
• for collaborations
• Grid Event/Logging service
• Access to OGSA services
• Access to directory services
• Specialized Application Factory access
• Distributed applications
• Workflow
• Access to Metadata Index tools
• User searchable index

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Portal Server
Adapted from slides The NCSA Alliance Portal and
the Open Grid Computing Environment Project by
D. Gannon, G. Fox, B. Plale, M. Pierce, M.
Thomas, C. Severance, G. von Lazewski, and J.
Alameda.
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Portlet Approach to Grid Services
Adapted from slides The NCSA Alliance Portal and
the Open Grid Computing Environment Project by
D. Gannon, G. Fox, B. Plale, M. Pierce, M.
Thomas, C. Severance, G. von Lazewski, and J.
Alameda.
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A Pane and portlet
Adapted from slides The NCSA Alliance Portal and
the Open Grid Computing Environment Project by
D. Gannon, G. Fox, B. Plale, M. Pierce, M.
Thomas, C. Severance, G. von Lazewski, and J.
Alameda.
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Advantages of Portlet Approach

• Easy to add new grid services and reconfigure
  users view (context)
• Different software developers can provide portals
  to be plugged into portal
• Many parties developing portal and portlet tools
  -- Jetspeed (Apache), Websphere (IBM),
  GridSphere,
• Portal/portlet standard called JSR 168 emerging
  (portlet Java Specification Request open
  standard).

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Portal Layout
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National Science FoundationMiddleware Initiative
(NMI)

• Started in 2001 initially over 3 years to create
  and deploy advanced network services that
  simplify access to diverse Internet information
  and services.
• Provides a centralized location for important
  grid software.
• Current NMI package includes Globus, Condor,
  MPI-G2, and
• a new grid portal project called OGCEGrid
  (funding started Sept 2003).

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• Consortium established Fall 2003 to foster
  collaborations and shareable components with
  portal developers worldwide

The following screenshots taken from
http//www.ogce.org
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MembershipJoin/participate in different topic
groups (Group tabs across top).
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Schedule Maintain a personal or group calendar.
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ResourcesUsers and groups can upload/share
documents and URLs.
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DiscussionParticipate in discussions with other
members of your group
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ChatEngage other members of your group in
online discussion.
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Proxy Manager and Job SubmitObtain/manage Grid
credentials to access Grid resources through
browser. Also shown are GRAM job launchers and
sample "ping" portlet.
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LDAP Browser Navigate LDAP server of your choice.
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Grid FTP Use your credential to browse remote
directories/upload/download files.
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Grid ContextStore arbitrary web objects
(movies, web pages, audio files) in a
customizable, annotated directory tree.
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GridPort Information Repository PortletsSeveral
GPIR portlets available for browsing.
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GridPort Job Sequencing Portlets To set up
sequences of jobs through a scheduler.
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Anabas Impromptu real time shared display,
audio, and chats.
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NewsgroupsPortlets allow users to participate
in/administer online newsgroup.
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OGRE Demo use of OGRE for job management.
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Java CoG WorkflowPortlet allows you to set up a
Java CoG-based Workflow.
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Application ManagementExample interface around
MyProxy, GRAM, and GridFTP.
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Condor PortletsTo submit and monitor jobs
through Condor.
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More Information on portals

• Books
• Grid Computing Making the Global Infrastructure
  a Reality ed. F. Berman, G. C. Fox and A. J. G.
  Hey, Wiley, 2003
• 1 Chapter 27 The Grid portal development kit
  by J. Novotny.
• 2 Chapter 28 Building grid computing portals
  the NPACI grid portal toolkit by M. P. Thomas
  and J. R. Boisseau

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More Information

• JSR 168 Portlet specification http//jcp.org/about
  Java/communityprocess/review/jsr168
• GridLab, The GridSphere Portal
• http//www.gridsphere.org/gridsphere/gridsphere
• Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation
  Grid (NEESGrid)
• http//www.neesgrid.org

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Would anyone like to develop a portal for
teaching grid computing (using OGCE toolkit)?
Paid () ?
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Would anyone like to develop a portal for new
EPA/UNC-C/UNC-A VisualGrid project (using OGCE
toolkit)?
Paid () ?