Virtualization and Grid Computing

Regarding the last entry, Workspace Service TP1.3, release candidate 1, the user and administrator documentation is now ready to go.

Mail sent to workspace-dev earlier:

We are busy preparing TP1.3 documentation and have put release candidate #1 online in the meantime. You can download RC1 here:

http://workspace.globus.org/vm/TP1.3/index.html

Currently the changelog, new interface description pages, and plugin description page are prepared (still considered drafts though). However, the new user and administrator guides are not online yet, see the RC1 notes at the link above.

We are only recommending past workspace service installers try out the release candidate.

The changelog contains a summary section at its beginnng, see:

http://workspace.globus.org/vm/TP1.3/index.html#changelog

Some of the additions: group deployments, usage tracking modules, configuration changes to make administration easier, client enhancements, and documentation enhancements.

Instead of a single allocation, EC2 announced you can run several different kinds of instances.

See the EC2 home page for details:

$0.10 - Small Instance (Default)

1.7 GB of memory, 1 EC2 Compute Unit (1 virtual core with 1 EC2 Compute Unit), 160 GB of instance storage, 32-bit platform

$0.40 - Large Instance

7.5 GB of memory, 4 EC2 Compute Units (2 virtual cores with 2 EC2 Compute Units each), 850 GB of instance storage, 64-bit platform

$0.80 - Extra Large Instance

15 GB of memory, 8 EC2 Compute Units (4 virtual cores with 2 EC2 Compute Units each), 1690 GB of instance storage, 64-bit platform

In many cases it may be more cost effective to still get the small instance but just get a lot of them, this will be interesting for our workspace EC2 adapter and contextualization users (and us!). Once we make the small alterations to accomodate requesting these types, it will be just as easy to get 100 x small instance as 25 x large instance, or whatever combination, because deployment configurations can be coordinated on the fly. What would be best for what situation would have to be examined closely. An extra large instance for the virtual cluster head node(s) or storage/transfer node(s) could be extremely useful for the typical grid-cluster bottlenecks.

Quoting from workspace news:

The STAR community successfully completed its first production-size deployment of a VM-based virtual cluster managed by the workspace service and backed by EC2 resources.

The 100 node cluster was composed of a headnode and workernodes based on the OSG 0.6.0 grid middleware stack and Torque. Its deployment-time configuration was securely coordinated by the new workspace contextualization technology.

[UPDATE, related: http://www.gridvm.org/virtual-cluster-appliances.html]

[UPDATE, see: One-click clusters, VWS TP1.3.3]

Tom Scavo writes:

The GridShib Project is pleased to announce the immediate release of GridShib SAML Tools v0.2.0 Technology Preview 2, the first release of the GridShib SAML Tools specifically for developers.

http://gridshib.globus.org/downloads/gridshib-saml-tools-0_2_0-tp2-src.tar.gz
http://gridshib.globus.org/downloads/gridshib-saml-tools-0_2_0-tp2-src.zip

http://gridshib.globus.org/docs/gridshib-saml-tools-0.2.0-tp2/readme.html
http://gridshib.globus.org/docs/gridshib-saml-tools-0.2.0-tp2/install.html

http://viewcvs.globus.org/viewcvs.cgi/gridshib/saml/tool/java/doc/CHANGES.txt?revision=1.4&view=markup

Technology Preview 2 includes the following new features:

• Support for multi-valued attributes
• Complete source code distribution, including the Globus SAML Library
• New GridShib Common Java API (gridshib-common-0_2_0.jar) includes:
  • the GridShib Security Framework, a standalone implementation of the X.509 Binding for SAML Assertions
  • the Loadable interface and its implementations
  • the EntityMap interface and its implementations
  • the GridShib Entity Mapper, a container for EntityMap implementations
• Extensive javadoc documentation
• New top-level build file for developers (available from CVS only)

This is the last TP-level release of v0.2.0. We anticipate the final version of GridShib SAML Tools v0.2.0 will be released Aug 24, 2007.

VDT 1.8.0 has been released.

http://vdt.cs.wisc.edu/releases/1.8.0/release.html

Highlights of the new features since 1.6.1:

* Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 is now supported.

* We are now using Globus 4.0.5. This release incorporates many (but not all) of the patches that we used to apply to Globus. In particular, it incorporates nearly all of the “community branch” (for TeraGrid) changes that we used apply as a set of patches. This change will make it easier to maintain our Globus build. Also, WS-GRAM received a number of fixes to improve reliability and scalability. You can see our patches to Globus. (VDT Ticket 2721)

* Java 5 is now the default instead of Java 4, except for web applications running in Tomcat 5.0. (VDT Ticket 2718)

* VOMS nows runs on 64-bit computers.

* For OSG installations, batch job managers (Condor, PBS, SGE, and LSF) will reset GLOBUS_LOCATION for jobs based on OSG_GRID. This allows GLOBUS_LOCATION to be different for the gatekeeper and the worker nodes. This has been tested on all platforms, but it might not be working on LSF — the current behavior on LSF seems to simply not change GLOBUS_LOCATION, so it is no worse than it used to be.

* There is now an RPM for installing the CA certificates. It has been lightly tested. If you want to use it, it’s best to tell the VDT not to install the CA certificates at all, and then just use the RPM.

* There is now a program, vdt-update-certs, for automatically updating the CA Certificates. It is a cron job that is optionally enabled.

* The way in which web applications are installed into Tomcat 5.0 and 5.5 is now more robust and more consistent with Tomcat best practices.

* Pacman 3.20 is now the minimum supported version of Pacman. It is substantially faster than previous versions of pacman, which makes a VDT install faster.

VDT Team

Tom Scavo writes of two new GridShib technology preview releases:

The GridShib Project is pleased to announce the simultaneous release of GridShib SAML Tools v0.2.0 Technology Preview 1 and GridShib for GT v0.6.0 Technology Preview 4. These two components work together to seamlessly integrate SAML into a Globus grid environment.

To evaluate this new software technology, please refer to this Quick Start:

http://gridshib.globus.org/docs/gridshib-gt-0.6.0-tp4/quick-start.html

The Quick Start guide gives detailed instructions for installing, configuring, and using Globus Java WS Core 4.0.5, GridShib for GT v0.6.0, and GridShib SAML Tools v0.2.0.

For more information and links, see http://www.globus.org/mail_archive/gridshib-dev/2007/07/msg00047.html

Tom Scavo writes on gridshib-dev:

Technology Preview 3 of GridShib for GT v0.6.0 introduces some significant new features:

• A single comprehensive PDP, the GridShibPDP
• Implementation of a new Attribute Aggregation Algorithm (push + pull)
• Dual support for both GT4.0 and GT4.1+
• Improved logging

This is in addition to features already introduced in previous versions of GridShib for GT:

• Support for both Attribute Push (NEW) and Attribute Pull
• Blacklisting of IP addresses (NEW)
• Attribute Mapping
• Attribute-based Authorization Policy

Read the whole announcement for more details!