Rochester Institute of Technology

Cyberaide Shell: Interactive Task Management for Grids and

Cyberinfrastructure

Gregor von Laszewski, Andrew J. Younge, Xi He, and Fugang Wang

Service Oriented Cyberinfrastructure Laboratory

Rochester Institute of Technology

Bldg 74, Lomb Memorial Drive

Rochester, NY 14523-5608

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Agenda

• Introduction

• Related Research

• Problem

• Proposed Solution

• Design

• Implementation

• Use Case

• Conclusion

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Introduction

What is Grid Computing?

“Grid computing is a complex and diverse field where different technologies are constructed and combined to enable the use of distributed resources under administratively separate domains.”

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Grid Hierarchy

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Grid Fabric (Clusters)

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All clusters are batch queuing systems

Middleware• Middleware combines multiple clusters together.

– Administratively separate systems– Large dedicated clusters

• Globus Toolkit– Most popular of all Grid middleware technologies

• Developed at Argonne National Laboratory• GT4 uses advanced WSRF Web Services

• G-Lite– Developed by the EGEE project– Used in the Large Hadron Collider experiments

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The TeraGrid NSF-funded national-scale Grid Infrastructure

11 Locations – LONI, NCAR, NCSA, NICS, ORNL, PSC, IU, PU, SDSC, TACC, UC/ANL

1.1Petaflops, 161 thousand CPUs, 60 Petabytes disk space Dedicated 10G fiber lines to each location Specialized visualization servers

Uses Globus Toolkit 4’s basic WS services and security protocols

Grid Infrastructure Group (GIG) at U. Chicago Commity for Teragrid planning, management, and coordination

Science Gateways Independent services for specialized groups and organizations “TeraGrid Inside” capabilities Web Portals, desktop apps, coordinated access points Not Virtual Organizations (VOs)

TeraGrid View

SDSC

TACC

UC/ANL

NCSA

ORNL

PU

IU

PSC

NCAR

CaltechUNC/RENCI

UW

Resource Provider (RP)

Software Integration Partner

Grid Infrastructure Group (UChicago)

LONI

NICS

TeraGrid User Portal

Introduction

What is a System Shell?

“A system shell is a piece of software that provides a text based interface which abstracts complex services for users.”

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Shell environments

• Shells are used to abstract complex services

• Typically used in Operating Systems• Hide the complexity of the underlying kernel and

support services• Provide a unified user environment

• Command-Line Interface– To many power users, this is preferred– More function and control available

• Shells can be scripted to automate common high-level tasks.

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Shells used

• System shells are used as part of an OS to provide a CLI for users

• Distributed Shells execute tasks similar to system shells, however in Parallel

• Language Shells interprets users’s code and commands during runtime

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Problem

• A steep learning curve and high entry barrier limit the use of Grid computing within the scientific community.– Parallel programming is difficult – Using middleware technologies can be

cumbersome and inefficient– Users need to be advanced programmers just to

use the technology

• How do we simplify the Cyberinfrastructure environment for scientists?

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Requirements

• Simple, intuitive, and user friendly

• Unifying framework

• Extensible

• Interactive

• Fault tolerant

• Event management

• Support batch processing

• Integrates new Cyberinfrastructure

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What if we combined Grids with Shells?

Performance + Usability

(have your cake and eat it too)

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Cyberaide Shell

• Simple to use system shell which provides access to the powerful Grids and advanced Cyberinfrastructure that is available today

• However, “This isn’t your father’s UNIX shell…”

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High Level Design

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Architectural Design

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Implementation

– Set– Submit– Person– Man

– List– Experiment– Resources– Tasks

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• Prototype implementation

• Demonstrates our design’s feasibility

• Uses Globus GT2 and GT4 technologies for backend services

• Supports basic commands

Command List

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Nested Shells

• Cyberaide Shell supports the idea of Nested Shells– “shell-within-a-shell”– Each command has its own interpreter which

interrogates options dynamically– More efficient scripts

• Two Ways:

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Literate Semantic Objects (LSOs)

• New data management concept• LSOs store attribute-value pairs – simple!• Mutable during runtime• Object inheritance

– All objects inherent form this object

• Can be recorded in many different formats– XML, JSON, CSV– Converted to SQL

• Provide semantic information to the shell during runtime

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Extending Cyberaide Shell

• Creating a Service Oriented Architecture

• Expose shell a Web Service– Web Services Interoperability standar– WS-Security for endpoint to endpoint security with

X.509 certificates– Uses Apache CXF and Jetty HTTP server to host

Web service

• Various Client API’s possible

• Using Web service, its possible to build a Web Portal on top of the shell!

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Cyberaide Portal

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Use Case

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Future Work

• Implement other Cyberinfrastructure services– EGEE project and the Open Science Grid– Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

• Improve scheduling and workflow systems

• Improving integration with the Portal

• Develop language specific APIs

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Conclusion

• Cyberaide Shell helps scientists overcome the challenges faced when using advanced Cyberinfrastructure

• Combines the power of Grids with the usability of shells

• Enhances previous work in system shells with the use of semantic commands and nested commands

• Provides the shell as a Web service to allow for distributed usage across multiple platforms

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Questions?