Lee Liming

TeraGrid's integrated information service

The NSF TeraGrid project has designed and constructed a federated integrated information service (IIS) to serve its capability publishing and discovery needs. This service has also proven helpful in automating TeraGrids operational activities. We describe the requirements that motivated this work; IISs system architecture, information architecture, and information content; processes that IIS currently supports; and how various layers of the system architecture are being used. We also review motivating use cases that have not yet been satisfied by IIS and outline approaches for future work.

GridCopy: Moving Data Fast on the Grid

An important type of communication in grid and distributed computing environments is bulk data transfer. GridFTP has emerged as a de facto standard for secure, reliable, high-performance data transfer across resources on the grid. GridCopy provides a simple GridFTP client interface to users and extensible configuration that can be changed dynamically by administrators to make efficient data movement in the Grid easier for users.

Streamlining Grid Operations: Definition and Deployment of a Portal-based User Registration Service

Manual management of public key credentials can be a significant and often off-putting obstacle to Grid use, particularly for casual users. We describe the Portal-based User Registration Service (PURSE), a set of tools for automating user registration, credential creation, and credential management tasks. PURSE provides the system developer with a set of customizable components, suitable for integration with portals, that can be used to address the full lifecycle of Grid credential management. We describe the PURSE design and its use in portals for two systems, the Earth System Grid data access system and the Swegrid computational Grid. In both cases, the user is entirely freed from the need to create or manage public key credentials, thus simplifying the Grid experience and reducing opportunities for error. We argue that this capturing of common use cases in a reusable ‘solution’ can be a model for how Grid ease-of-use can be addressed in other domains as well.

Building Bridges from the Campus to XSEDE

XSEDE is the integration framework for national-scale, public HPC resources in the United States. XSEDE is used by thousands of researchers at hundreds of college and university campuses throughout the country, as well as many international collaborators. Over the past several program years, XSEDE has redefined its identity management, security, and service interfaces to bridge the gap between national-scale HPC resources and campus-based computing resources. These changes make it easier for research performed on campus to access our national computing resources and make them a part of the everyday research process. We report here on XSEDEs new identity management system and how it provides a smooth bridge between campus and national identity systems. We also describe how this federated security system supports two additional bridges between campuses and national HPC services, one involving data movement and another involving scientific workflows.