Light Weight Grid Platform: Light Weight Grid Platform: Design Methodology Design Methodology

Vladimir GetovUniversity of Westminster

MotivationMotivation Realization of pervasive computing in Grid. Extending the Grid services and benefits to

wider scale of applications and devices is not trivial.

Existing Grid Systems cannot entirely address this issue.

Real challenges are with Grid platforms than with Grid Applications.

Solution: a light-weight generic Grid platform – which could adapt itself to the context of usage.

Features of Existing Grid Features of Existing Grid SystemsSystemsOverwhelmingly feature-rich:

preventing self-adaptive deployment and ad-hoc usage of the systems

Unnecessary software and administrative overheads.

There is no concept of self-adaptation to context

Our StrategyOur StrategyEntirely based on component

technology Leverages existing viable technologies Considers a wider range of application

scenarios The platform is designed to be generic

and light-weight

Models and TechnologiesModels and Technologies Component/reference models influence our

design:– Common Component Architecture – Fractal Component Model– Enterprise Grid Alliance Reference Model

Technologies/projects which influence our design– MOCCA/H20, ProActive, ICENI I/II, Ibis, GRID

Superscalar, Alice, etc

Requirements Requirements Requirements evolve over time and concrete

specifications may not be possible. Analysing requirements of end-users and

other frameworks may give us some insight For this purpose, we have analysed the

following– MOCCA/H20, ProActive, ICENI I/II, Ibis, Alice, etc

Some of the technologies are not platform level frameworks.

But they provide key technologies in designing and engineering a platform

Existing Technologies and Design Existing Technologies and Design RequirementsRequirements MOCCA

– a lightweight distributed component platform ICENI I/II

– a Grid middleware infrastructure ALiCE

– A lightweight Grid middleware IBIS

– Java based optimising suite/library for Grid GRID Superscalar

– a framework to simplify Grid programming

Desired FeaturesDesired Features Lightweight and generic Static and dynamic metadata Dynamic deployment of components Reconfiguration and adaptivity Support for both client/server and P2P On-demand, provider centric service provision Minimal but sufficient security model Binding and coordination Additional services Distributed management

Overall ArchitectureOverall Architecture

Block DiagramBlock Diagram

Use Scenario 1: GENIEUse Scenario 1: GENIE Demonstrates the need for scalable modular

architecture for software systems

Models the behaviour of large-scale thermohaline circulation

Uses various scientific modules corresponding to different environmental fragments

Presents number of challenges including – Componentizing the modules– Efficient composition of components– Real-time scheduling, – Model-specific resource constrained simulations– Distributed execution – Consolidation of large volumes of data

Conclusions and Ongoing WorkConclusions and Ongoing Work

Our main objective was to define a light-weight Grid platform with “pluggable” features

We analysed a collection of existing platforms, as well as two use scenarios to extract key requirements that such a light-weight platform has to meet

Key issue that needs discussion is non-disruptive, dynamic (re-)configuration of service and component features.