Alice Off-line Meeting a Web interface for the

Alice Off-line Meeting a Web interface for the GRID world Erice (TP) - Italy, Sept 26 th, 2000 Andrea. Rodolico@enginframe. com

Outline NICE Company Profile Engin. Frame Targets Engin. Frame Architecture and Features Engin. Frame with Alice Q&A

NICE Targets and Skills n Distributed Resource Management – Master LSF VAR for Italy since 1995 n System Administration – consulting for System Administration – heterogeneous cluster integration n Computing Portal – Engin. Frame HPC interface and resource browser – Projects and consulting in distributed computing

NICE Customers n h rc n INFN, CNR ea ELASIS, UTS Pharmacia & Upjohn STMicroelectronics Accent ABB Ricerche ENEL Ansaldo Nuovo Pignone (GE) SGI, Sun, HP, Compaq/DEC Universities. . . n CILEA, CASPUR n n ENEA, ICTP n n s Re Scuola Normale di Pisa mn Italtel, CSELT o ec n Telecom Italia el T u A o ern Alenia /A to n FIAT AVIO n Ferrari n Centro Ricerche FIAT n Iveco A D n E n ne E yn rg n n n

Outline NICE Company Profile Engin. Frame Targets Engin. Frame Architecture and Features Engin. Frame with Alice Q&A

Problems Are Technical Computing environments getting more and more complex? n How can we simplify access to distributed computing resources? n How can we automate complex workflows and large scale problems? n How can we integrate computing and information services? n

What is Engin. Frame? n n Inter/Intranet access to computing resources Any-client can connect through any browser – Thin/Fat clients, appliances, PDA, Wireless, . . . n High scalability & flexibility for HPC resources – Access an arbitrary number of HW & SW resources (clusters, stand-alone hosts, ASP’s…) n n Flexible in content presentation Easy to use, setup and manage

Computing Portal in Action Dedicated Servers Clients Standard Web Browser Inter/Intranet Server(s) Meta. Frame Compute Farm(s)

Engin. Frame Benefits n n n n Enables an instant migration to the Computing Portal paradigm from a command based world Intuitive XML dialect to define services Enhances resource Manageability for System and Application managers Simplifies resource Accessibility for users Ease deployment of new software and methodologies Automatic and transparent enforcement of new policies Enables smooth NT-UNIX-appliance integration

Outline NICE Company Profile Engin. Frame Targets Engin. Frame Architecture and Features Engin. Frame with Alice Q&A

Engin. Frame (R)evolution 1. x - LAN Integration (1998) » Unix-Windows NT Integration » Simplified parallel and distributed computing, … 2. x - WAN Meta. Computing (1999) » Standards convergence » Dynamic contents management 3. 0 - Computing Portal

CLIENT WEB SERVER RESOURCES HO W? Users “browse” the Computing resources as easily as a Web site. Collects Resource offers and creates HTML pages and forms to interact with. Agents “publish” service offerings as XML and act on servers’ request WHY? Engin. Frame three tier model Standard Web browsers allow broad accessibility and very positive user experience Web servers with servlet engine are becoming a standard XML can describe many different kinds of services (LSF clusters, standalone, …)

Engin. Frame architecture X / ICA connections Clients Standard Web Browser Browsing request HTML Rendering Web Server Engin. Frame Server and Repository Meta. Frame + NFuse Service request XML Output Application Server Engin. Frame LSF Agent NFuse Agent. . . LSF Compute Farm

Engin. Frame service description n n Describe service options, actions and information Intuitive design Fast and easy prototyping Use your preferred XML editor SCREEN CAPTURE OR OTHER IMAGE

Engin. Frame user experience n n User logs in and provides its credentials Browses through service offerings Fills the required data form and (if needed) specifies input files Submits the request for the job

Security Open architecture to support different security policies n Directly supports HTTP authentication and plain-text authentication n Connection can be secured with SSL or VPN n Security plug-ins will be available for most common protocols (Grid, AFS, …) n

Data management: Local input Web Server Engin. Frame Server and Repository File Attach Local data n n Supports local data transfer to the agent Only requirement: v 3+ standard browser Engin. Frame LSF Agent NFuse Agent. . . Remote storage

Data management: Remote input Web Server Engin. Frame Server and Repository Remote File Browsing Engin. Frame LSF Agent NFuse Agent. . . Remote data n n Support remote file browsing (requires Java) Only path information is transferred

Data management: Local output Web Server HTTP Download Local disk n n Engin. Frame Server and Repository Output Retrieval Engin. Frame LSF Agent NFuse Agent. . . Remote output Output files can be “downloaded” to the client stdout rendering: XML, HTML, plain text

Data management: Remote output Web Server Service Request Engin. Frame Server and Repository Interactive Post Processing n n Service Request Engin. Frame LSF Agent NFuse Agent. . . Remote output Output can be directly post-processed remotely ICA or X[3 D] can be used for user interaction

Engin. Frame Foundations n Completely standards based – Apache XML suite » Cocoon, FOP, Xalan-J, Xerces-J » Apache + JServ/Jakarta (Servlet 2. x) – Reference platform: Linux » Red. Hat Linux 6. 1 or 6. 2 + Sun JDK 1. 2. 2 n Installation facts – Minimal footprint » Server: < 5 Mb Disk; < 20 Mb RAM; < 1 s CPU/hit » Client: NO LOCAL SOFTWARE! – RPM: Work in progress!

Outline NICE Company Profile Engin. Frame Targets Engin. Frame Architecture and Features Engin. Frame with Alice Q&A

Engin. Frame with Alice n n Simple but comprehensive web interface to Aliroot Supports LSF, but not restricted to it – – n distributed resource management (DRM) off the shelf Supports multiple sites with Multi. Cluster accounting and reporting File Transfer Agent (FTA) for data transfer Automate large scale problems – Job array support

Alice test-bed in Catania VENUS for Configuration Management centralized administration n LSF Multi. Cluster for DRM n Engin. Frame as Web interface n Coming up: n – LSF Analyzer for accounting & reporting – LSF FTA for comprehensive and fault tolerant data transfer – GLOBUS integration of the above

Open opportunities n We are open to work together! n Our to-do list – Authentication with GRID facilities – Full support to AFS – Integration with LDAP – Alice advanced workflow management

Outline NICE Company Profile Engin. Frame Targets Engin. Frame Architecture and Features Engin. Frame with Alice Q&A

Engin. Frame freedom Resources Applications Flexibility Devices Connections Information Seamless access to a full range of heterogeneous servers and clusters. Seamless access to a full range of interactive and batch applications. Access from any client device or appliance Access with any connection. LAN, WAN, Internet, and wireless. Render embedded application information (tutorials, context sensitive on-line help, . . . )

Networking Information Communication Engineering “Your new partner in Network Computing” e-mail: info@nice-italy. com