Entries in 'gt4'
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Congratulations everyone!
On behalf of the Globus Toolkit development team I am pleased to announce that a new stable release of the Globus Toolkit is now available. GT4.2.0 contains an upgrade to the web services specifications used by the toolkit as well as new features in all services. New users are encouraged to use the 4.2.0 release. Existing users may wish to evaluate the new software while maintaining their existing installations; due to the specification upgrade, the webservices are incompatible with the 4.0.x series. Details on the spec upgrade are available in the release notes.
Relevant 4.2.0 links:
Thanks for your support of Globus software!
Charles
New Features!
I am happy to announce the TP 1.3.2 release — the “cloudkit release” of the Workspace Service. You can download the new release from: http://workspace.globus.org/downloads/index.html
As many of you have probably noticed we have recently been sending announcements about the availability of compute clouds for scientific communities: http://workspace.globus.org/clouds/
In a nutshell, TP 1.3.2 allows you to build your own cloud. The main addition is a new “cloud client” for the workspace service which simplifies (and also hides) much of the workspace functionality to provide an EC2-like set of features. The new client also provides a limited form of “contextualization” (more coming in the next release!). We also provide a step-by-step “cloud guide” that allows you to configure your own cloud.
For a complete set of new features (many more but less significant) look to:
http://workspace.globus.org/vm/TP1.3.2/index.html#changelog
We look forward to hearing from you — and if you do decide to configure a cloud and would like help finding users, please do let us know.
Have fun!
The Workspace Team
–
Kate Keahey,
Mathematics & CS Division, Argonne National Laboratory
Computation Institute, University of Chicago
If you’re feeling adventurous, there’s a workspace service pre-release out (click on the pic):
Tom Scavo announces some great news:
Today, it is with great pleasure that the GridShib Project announces the immediate release of GridShib for Globus Toolkit v0.6.0. This release culminates a 20-month effort to bring SAML-based attribute push to X.509-based Grids.
GridShib for Globus Toolkit (GT) is an implementation of a Grid Service Provider, an entity much like a SAML Service Provider but for Grids. A Grid Service Provider consumes X.509-bound SAML tokens, a new type of security token that enables attributed-based authorization in X.509-based Grids.
Most everything you need to know about GridShib for GT is on this web page:
http://gridshib.globus.org/docs/gridshib-gt-0.6.0/readme.html
On this readme page, you will find more detailed information about the GridShib for GT software as well as links to downloads and documentation.
A major advance in this version of GridShib for GT is support for the TeraGrid Science Gateway use case where an intermediary makes a grid request on behalf of a browser user. The Gateway binds a SAML token to an X.509 proxy certificate and makes a request to a gridshib-enabled web service. On the service side, GridShib for GT consumes the SAML token and makes an access control decision based on the security information in the token.
As a SAML-consuming software component, GridShib for GT complements the previously released GridShib SAML Tools and GridShib Certification Authority (CA), which are SAML-producing software components. These three components together enable attribute-based authorization in X.509-based Grids. See the Quick Start for step-by-step instructions that show how to use GridShib for GT v0.6, GridShib SAML Tools v0.3, and GridShib CA v0.5.1 together on Windows and UNIX systems:
http://gridshib.globus.org/docs/gridshib/quick-start.html
For links to all GridShib software downloads and additional documentation, visit the GridShib Downloads page:
http://gridshib.globus.org/download.html
Funding for GridShib software has been provided by the NSF NMI program and the NSF TeraGrid program.
Tom Scavo
For the entire GridShib Team
Virtual Workspaces Tutorial at Open Source Grid Cluster (May 12-16, 2008)
There will be a Virtual Workspaces tutorial at the Open Source Grid Cluster conference in Oakland, CA. The conference is May 12-16, 2008. The Virtualization and Cloud Computing with Globus session is on Wednesday, May 14th, from 4:30-6:00 pm. We hope to see you there!
Quoting from the summary:
One of the primary obstacles users face in grid computing is that Grids provide access to many diverse resources, their applications often require a very specific, customized environment. This disconnect can lead to resource underutilization, user frustration, and much wasted effort spent on bridging the gap between applications and resources. Virtual Workspaces describe the environment required for the execution of an application that can be dynamically deployed across a variety of resources creating a working and consistent platform for grid applications.
This tutorial will introduce the Globus Toolkit workspace service that implements workspaces as Xen virtual machines and enables authorized grid clients to dynamically deploy them and manage their resources. Further, we will describe and demonstrate the workspace “cloudkit” that provides a user-friendly interface on top of the workspace service allowing authorized users to easily provision and run VMs on the available community clouds. Finally, we will describe how the process of contextualization can be used to provide on-demand functioning clusters and give examples of its use by applications.
Globus Toolkit 4.0.7 now available:
On behalf of the Globus Toolkit development team I am pleased to announce that a new incremental release of GT4 is now available for download. GT4.0.7 is recommended for all users. It was released because of bug 5910, a potential RFT data corruption bug. The bug affected only GT4.0.6, and users of GT4.0.6 can apply the update package from http://www.globus.org/toolkit/advisories.html. New users are encouraged to start with the 4.0.7 release, as other bugs were also fixed as listed in the release notes.
Relevant 4.0.7 links:
Thanks for your support of Globus software!
Cheers,
Charles
We are pleased to announce GridShib SAML Tools v0.3.0, the final release in the v0.3.0 development cycle:
http://gridshib.globus.org/docs/gridshib-saml-tools-0.3.0/readme.html
http://gridshib.globus.org/download.html#saml-tools
The GridShib SAML Tools are a suite of standalone client tools that issue SAML assertions and optionally bind these assertions to X.509 proxy certificates. To try out the software before downloading, visit our online demo:
https://computer.ncsa.uiuc.edu/gst-demo/
The GridShib SAML Tools require only Java 1.4 (or later) and Ant 1.6 (or later). Proxy certificates issued by the SAML Tools are compatible with GridShib for Globus Toolkit v0.6.0 Alpha (or later).
There have been significant changes in this version of the GridShib SAML Tools since the previous release:
http://gridshib.globus.org/docs/gridshib-saml-tools-0.3.0/CHANGES.txt
Important new features of GridShib SAML Tools v0.3.0 include:
- enhanced command-line interface
- new command-line options for the SAML Assertion Issuer Tool, including the option to output a DER-encoded ASN.1 structure
- new X.509 Binding Tool, to bind arbitrary content to a non-critical extension of an X.509 proxy certificate
- new SAML Security Info Tool, for examining the contents of X.509-bound SAML tokens
- expanded Java API, for producing and consuming SAML assertions and X.509 proxy certificates
- support for the TeraGrid Science Gateway Use Case
This development cycle was largely driven by the TeraGrid Science Gateway Use Case:
http://gridshib.globus.org/docs/gridshib-saml-tools-0.3.0/teragrid/readme.html
Science Gateways use the SAML Tools to enable auditing, incident response, and access control in Globus-based grids.
To learn more about this and other use cases, visit the “About GridShib” page:
http://gridshib.globus.org/about.html
While the GridShib SAML Tools produce X.509-bound SAML tokens, the complementary software component GridShib for Globus Toolkit consumes them. The latter is scheduled for release later this month or early next. See the roadmap on the GridShib home page for the latest updates.
Tom Scavo
For the GridShib Team
Some cool new features:
On behalf of the workspace team, I am happy to announce the TP 1.3.1 release of the Workspace Service. You can download the new release from: http://workspace.globus.org/downloads/index.html
The main new feature in this release is the implementation of the workspace pilot which provides non-invasive adaptations to batch schedulers (such as PBS) enabling sites to run virtual machines alongside jobs. The details of this approach are described in: http://workspace.globus.org/papers/workspace-pilot-paper-submitted.pdf
In addition, the release also contains the ensemble service that allows clients to create ensembles of heterogeneous virtual machines to be deployed and managed together, improvements to the client, and several bug fixes. The complete changelog can be found at: http://workspace.globus.org/vm/TP1.3.1/index.html#changelog
We welcome comments, feedback, and bug reports. Information about the project, software downloads, documentation and instructions on how to join the workspace-user mailing list for support questions can be found at: http://workspace.globus.org
Happy Valentine’s Day!
As you can read there, the main new feature is the pilot infrastructure. The paper Kate refers to in the announcement is a relatively short read and lays out the ideas (and a practical evaluation) in an organized way. But briefy: the pilot is a program the service will submit to a local site resource manager in order to obtain time on the VMM nodes. When not allocated to the workspace service, these nodes will be used for jobs as normal. Those jobs run in normal system accounts in Xen domain 0 with no guest VMs running.
Importantly, the approach leaves the site resource manager in full control of the nodes and requires no modifications to the site resource manager. Save perhaps possible configuration changes you might like to make. For example, you can mark particular nodes as able to accomodate guest VMs: the workspace service supports sending pilot requests to particular LRM queues, or providing a particular node property etc. This allows you to really organize not just when but where VMs can run.
Several extra safeguards have been added to make sure the node is returned from VM hosting mode at the proper time, including support for:
- the workspace service being down or malfunctioning
- LRM preemption (including deliberate LRM job cancellation)
- node reboot/shutdown
Also included is a one-command “kill 9″ facility for administrators as a “worst case scenario” contingency.
So as a buzzword experiment, I want to put in a particular keyword here and see how the search engine hits work out :-). I think you know what it may be…
Cloud computing
Go make a cloud!
And with the workspace pilot, you won’t have to switch over all at once. Take it for a test run and tell us about it on workspace-user.
We’ve got some exciting stuff in the pipeline for the next few months, too (see the last release announcement and the self-configuring 100 node VM cluster news). I am really happy with where the project is going and has been recently.
- Tim
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