Grid service
The grid service is currently moving forward with the explosive growth momentum. But how should we choose a grid solution? Are you considering relevant standards, web service compatibility, development environment compatibility, etc. Is this just a scam? There are many news about grid services and platforms, but also conflict, people are difficult to see a toolbox for providing services or construction services. In this article, we will study a variety of grid development platforms available, and introduce some projects and companies that provide practical grid services. Grid Overview We all know that computers are idle in most time, it doesn't matter, just send electronics between devices, then display the latest screen saver. These computers are consumed energy, but in fact it does not generate any useful events or information in its processor. It is estimated that a computer is used to perform 5% of its processing tasks. Even most servers use only 15% of processing capabilities to meet the needs of users, and the remaining server time (CPU, RAM, hard disk, etc.) is still free to use.
So, the grid service appeared. But what is something in the grid, actually help us use these unused resources in our own project? How should we use grid technology to get greater benefits from our investment on your device.
Grid Services is just a tool for searching for outsight space life, which depends on our current technology and services to promote, promote and expand them.
We need to study two systems, one is the development platform, which allows us to develop and deploy mesh technology, and the second is existing grid services, we can use these services to support our grid projects.
Grid Development Platform When we choose to develop platforms, a key feature that needs to be studied is whether it is to open Grid Services Architecture, OGSA and the Open Grid Services Infrastructure (Open Grid Services Infrastructure) OGSI) compatible. These criteria are capable of interacting between different grid services by setting some specific parameters, and allows you to design and develop applications with a variety of different toolboxes, which can also talk to each other between these applications.
Even with OGSI / OGSA is not compatible, we can also consider other features, such as what deployment options. If you are using the grid used within your company, it is best not to choose a solution that is not compatible with the already hardware device.
There is also a problem to consider, that is, whether the system can use for a long time, whether it is flexible. Open source solution is more attractive, because so you can expand your system's functionality by modifying and expanding the source code. Even if you cannot access the source code, if the system's scalability is very scalable, or you can use multiple source program languages, it is also good.
The main grid development toolboxes include:
IBM Grid Toolbox, this toolbox is based on Globus Toolkit (later), is a very easy installation of grid development tools. Documents are expanded in Globus Toolkit and develop customized scripts and components for IBM EServer hardware systems running AIX or Linux. The main goal of this toolbox is to calculate the grid. The so-called computing grid is to split the independent computing task into several smaller working unit groups and processed separately. Globus Toolkit is the first universal toolbox that supports OGSA 3.0. Globus is the first universal toolbox for developing grid applications, where components can be used in a variety of different grid systems. As part of the system flexibility, the Globus toolbox provides a set of connectors (called Commondity Grid Kits), which allows us to use the Globus system in Java, Python, and Perl applications. OGSI.NET is an OGSA / OGSI standard implemented with Microsoft.NET technology, which can run a grid system on an existing Windows system. Python Extension for the Grid is a grid implementation specifically for Python, which is not compatible with OGSA / OGSI, but it does provide a flexible grid application development environment. Python has cross-platform compatibility, so you can deploy applications on a wide variety of different platforms, because this tool is open source, so you can modify and update the code. Adapt to your own needs. All of these toolboxs must prove that they can depend on standards, or have sufficient flexibility to extend your design and mesh solution. Many of the grid development companies have a grid service or platform, but they can't meet your computational needs more or less. Some products are toolboxes, some products are hardware, or both are. You can use these products in a relatively short time to support your grid project. Other products are available in a grid platform, including some already existing clients (grid providers) that can provide you with the required calculation.
Generally speaking, these services are designed to provide calculation based on Internet-based clients, usually, corporate and service providers can provide thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or even millions of potential CPU resources. Used to support your calculation needs.
However, some service is designed to be installed in an internal environment in your business, using your own idle calculation. This is obviously limited by the calculation within the organization. If you have only a few hundred or thousands of machines, the total calculation force in the grid is obviously a lot more than the calculation power available based on Internet-based service.
In this case, a solution is to use a ready-made toolbox to provide a mesh platform and calculation using specialized software and hardware. A few companies can provide this service, usually these services can adapt to the more flexible calculation services provided by the company. The flexibility of these services is expressed, and we can add new computers to the grid by releasing or purchasing equipment, extending new computers to grids.
Participants in this area include:
IBM: IBM supplied products are not limited to building and deploy grid services. IBM is the first to carry out a series of projects to provide grid services and recommendations for specific calculation problems, such as R & D, engineering and design, business analysis, and more. IBM is currently integrating grid technology and features into some of its product lines, including DB2 and WebSphere. Web development products like WebSphere will achieve combination with grid technology at the end of 2003. IBM is also committed to studying grid-based storage products, making information on grid, rather than isolated on a few-specific servers, so that the listed load and bottlenecks often occurring in a single server solution. Grid technology is still the core component of IBM with the strategic strategy. This strategy is built on the IBM ESERVER technology, providing calculation with a blade server. The blade server is an ultra-small computer placed on the card, which can be configured on a typical 19 # frame to achieve a very high-density of high computing. By using grid technology, we can view the blade server network as a single, unusually fast resource. Because the blade rack is easy to upgrade, it is easy to expand by adding a new server, so these servers are just an additional computing resource in a powerful grid. In this way, the company can easily implement computational upgrades, even temporary upgrades, without re-building, configuring, and developing software used by the computer. Parabon: The system name produced by Paabon is called Frontier, which is called Pioneer. This is a common computing platform that uses Java technology as a client environment, so Pioneer can be supported in a variety of different environments, but the system only supports Windows and Linux. The submission and management system provided by the Frontier system can accept the submitted work and redistribute the work to the stand-alone Pioneer client. Once the client completes the work unit assigned to them, send information back to the Frontier server, compared to other results. As a service-oriented service, Parabon has a large number of machines that meet your calculation needs. Currently, at one end of the server, the Frontier engine provides a wide range of monitoring and reporting capabilities, making the new task submission and the study of the task project processing process becomes very easy. You can also prioritize your work to better control the flow of specific projects in your grid. In terms of security, the exchange of information is done between the Frontier server and the Pioneer client component, complete by the encrypted channel. On a separate client, we can get relevant status information. The PARADON reporting mechanism is actually very accurate, and the cost can be paid according to the calculation time provided by each individual client. Although this feature is currently not used, in the future, this may lead to the company to provide computational power to the grid for a clear profitable purpose.
United Devices: United Devices Based on grid technology, a set of different solutions include both internal, enterprise-class grid solutions, including Internet-based grid computing solutions. They have installed a large number of Internet-based clients (as of July 2003, about 1.8 million PCs) and have begun to provide calculation for several different projects and clients. The company's Grid MP Enterprise is an enterprise-level solution that deploys on a variety of clients (desktop computers and notebooks), workstations, and servers. The system is used to submit the front end of the task very flexible, and is an outstanding solution for computational calculation. Grid Mp On Demand uses the United Devices's grid platform, which can be used by small and medium-sized companies, and its usage is divided according to projects. In this way, the client can submit an item to the grid infrastructure without having to worry about the security hidden dangers on the Internet, and will not encounter the problem that load and system requirements in your internal network cannot meet. Grid MP Global is the company based on Internet-based project. At present, some research analysts are using the system for protein synthesis. Many such services have now started. There are also some phases that are in development, investigation, and improvement. However, these services have shown that grid technology gradually became mainstream.
The end language is now in this technique, and the future of grid services is very healthy. As more companies have been providing easy-to-use flexible grid services, more and more people use grid services and provide their own grid services. The ability to accurately monitor component execution in the independent client is also very attractive, because there are many companies to offer their own computing resources to other grid projects. For example, if the big company has thousands of idle machines, they can sell their own calculations. By providing CPU resources to scientific research and other CPU-intensive tasks, earning money from grid technology.
With the introduction of OGSA / OGSI standards in the process of developing a grid service, the use and availability of grid services will grow sharply within the next few years.
Reference
For more information on enabling applications for grid environments, see the IBM Red Book "Globus Enable Application Grid Computing Features".
The URL of the IBM Grid computing site is http://www.ibm.com/grid.
For more information on Globus Project, please visit http://www.globus.org.
For information on the steering standard platform, please refer to the article "Grid Calculation - Treated Standardization Platform".
To learn about OGSA standards and their working principles, see DeveloperWorks Articles "Open Grid Service Architecture Tour"
For more details on the United Devices Grid Solution, please visit http://www.ud.com/solutions/.
Information related to Python Extensions for the Grid, you can find from http://grail.sdsc.edu/projects/peg/.
For IBM ESERVER and its applications in a grid environment, visit http://www 132.ibm.com/content/home/store_ibmpublicusa/en_us/eserver/server.html.
The Parabon's Frontier and Pioneer components have a more detailed description on the Parabon Web site, and the URL is http://www.parabon.com.
Parabon and Pioneer clients can be found from http://www.parabon.com.
