http://www.gridvm.org On distributed computing, HPC, VMs, Web Services, Globus, Xen, and more. Sun, 03 May 2009 00:36:32 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Cool to see the mainstream press (Newsweek) mention Nimbus: Number Crunching Made Easy. http://www.gridvm.org/number-crunching-made-easy.html Just ran across an "interesting" definition of Nimbus: "Client-side cloud-computing interface to Globus-enabled TeraPort cluster at U of C" ... in these slides: http://eucalyptus.cs.ucsb.edu/documents/eucalyptus-slides-wolski-cloud_expo_apr08.ppt There is a Nimbus client (which can be replaced by an Amazon's EC2 client), true. But most of Nimbus is server side software. Teraport (and other Science Clouds) are not ... http://www.gridvm.org/what-is-nimbus.html Press Release: Nimbus and Cloud Computing Meet STAR Production Demands We've been running self-configuring 100+ node clusters on EC2 since 2007, but I would be remiss if I did not link to this announcement. http://www.gridvm.org/nimbus-and-cloud-computing-meet-star-production-demands.html Announcement: Perspectives on Distributed Computing: Thirty People, Four User Types, and the Distributed Computing User Experience is available for download. "This report chronicles and analyzes the responses of thirty users to questions about using the Globus Toolkit - starting with summaries of results and conclusions but also including very detailed appendices ... http://www.gridvm.org/perspectives-on-distributed-computing.html The Nimbus TP2.2 release provides a standalone context broker that can be used across Nimbus and EC2 clouds and continues our work on EC2 compatibility with the introduction of EC2 metadata server. In addition, the release contains new documentation and bug fixes. See the changelog for all the details. http://www.gridvm.org/nimbus-tp22.html Quoting from http://www.phreedom.org/research/rogue-ca/ "As a proof of concept we executed a practical attack scenario and successfully created a rogue Certification Authority (CA) certificate trusted by all common web browsers. This certificate allows us to impersonate any website on the Internet, including banking and e-commerce sites secured using the HTTPS protocol." I wrote ... http://www.gridvm.org/rogue-root-cas-because-of-md5-collisions.html It was a good feeling to pause for a moment and put a user quotes page together for Nimbus. We've worked hard to make Nimbus usable and useful -- but the best is yet to come! http://www.gridvm.org/nimbus-user-quotes.html Some interesting things in the new Xen road map. [via Stephen Spector] http://www.gridvm.org/new-xen-roadmap.html Besides the good stuff added to Nimbus, this release also introduces something called the AutoContainer which allows you to set up a Globus Java web services environment, from scratch and with security working, within about a minute (requires Linux/OSX and Java 1.5+). The main new features provided in this release are ... http://www.gridvm.org/nimbus-tp21.html All this Windows cloud news afoot. Make sure to read this post on the GoGrid blog: Windows in the Cloud? Been there, done that! GoGrid has already almost a year of proven experience providing Windows Server 2003/2008 to end users… we are also a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. http://www.gridvm.org/windows-and-cloud-computing.html Tom Scavo writes on gridshib-user: We are pleased to announce GridShib for Globus Toolkit v0.6.1: http://gridshib.globus.org/downloads/gridshib-gt-0_6_1-src.tar.gz http://gridshib.globus.org/downloads/gridshib-gt-0_6_1-src.zip Please visit the GridShib for GT home page for an introduction and links to software and documentation: http://gridshib.globus.org/docs/gridshib-gt-0.6.1/ This version of GridShib for GT is primarily a bug fix release. There is one new feature, and that is, ... http://www.gridvm.org/gridshib-for-globus-toolkit-v061.html For those who haven't heard about the Xen 0wning Trilogy, make sure to check that out here and here. In a followup post to some apparent misinformation being spread (Microsoft executive "rebuts" our research!), I was surprised by this comment: Interestingly, if Mr. Riley only attended our Xen 0wning Trilogy at Black ... http://www.gridvm.org/xen-loc.html ;-) Quoting from http://gist.github.com/7263 #!/usr/bin/env ruby # gcalc / 26aug2008 chneukirchen / public domain require 'open-uri' q = ARGV.join(" ").gsub(/./m) { "%%%02X" % $&[0] } html = open("http://www.google.com/search?q=#{q}").read puts (html[%r{(.*?)}, 1] || 'not a calculation'). gsub(%r{\240| }, "").gsub("×", "x"). gsub(%r{(.*?)}, '^\\1 ') (tip via HubbuH) http://www.gridvm.org/surely-this-should-be-called-a-cloud-calculator.html An interesting project I ran across, it started in 2004. From http://vcl.ncsu.edu/: The Virtual Computing Lab (VCL) is a remote access service that allows you to reserve a computer with a desired set of applications for yourself, and remotely access it over the Internet. You can use all your favorite applications such as ... http://www.gridvm.org/nc-states-virtual-computing-lab.html I arrived in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria yesterday. Here to give a presentation of the pilot paper at Euro-Par and represent Nimbus on a panel at VHPC. I was jetlagged, so I tried to read a little bit, learning about some of the deeper corners of the fantastic Spring ... http://www.gridvm.org/primavera.html It would be interesting to have a lot of input on this survey if you have some time, it's only a few questions. From: Stephen Childs Subject: Survey on use of virtualization in production grids Hi all, Apologies for the slightly off-topic post. I am giving presentations soon on the use of virtualization in ... http://www.gridvm.org/survey-on-use-of-virtualization-in-production-grids.html It's thrilling to organize things better. Quoting from the Nimbus features page: There are currently two supported remote protocol sets: WSRF based: protocol implementation in longstanding use by previous workspace services and clients including the cloud-client. EC2 based: ... http://www.gridvm.org/nimbus-module-independence.html See the announcement: new strong internal interfaces and a new remote protocol implementation (compatible with EC2 clients) that can run alongside the WSRF based ones. Check out the changelog and the new FAQ. http://www.gridvm.org/nimbus-tp20.html Go Ask ALICE, the iSGTW image of the week. (Funny headline, see Go_Ask_Alice). Check out some screenshots here of Nimbus resources invovled in supporting this experiment. It's a small part of things as you can see from the scope of the grid but exciting nonetheless. The AliEn based virtual ... http://www.gridvm.org/alice.html Chris Samuel posted this job opportunity for a job with VPAC in Australia. If you know anyone that may be interested in the job, please pass this announcement along. It seems like people reading here would have a good probability of knowing someone that may be interested and who also ... http://www.gridvm.org/grid-systems-administrator-programmer.html I like the end of the recent S3 downtime explanation: "Though we're proud of our operational performance in operating Amazon S3 for almost 2.5 years, we know that any downtime is unacceptable and we won't be satisfied until performance is statistically indistinguishable from perfect." http://www.gridvm.org/statistically-indistinguishable-from-perfect.html VWS RSS feed: http://workspace.globus.org/rss.xml http://www.gridvm.org/vws-rss-feed.html A lot of developments with the workspace service and science clouds recently! The cluster technology lets you bootstrap generic images into new network and security contexts on the fly. We built a sample cluster on top of the technology that lets you create the cluster and be immediately ready to ... http://www.gridvm.org/one-click-clusters-vws-tp133.html 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 ... http://www.gridvm.org/major-globus-toolkit-release-gt420.html Cloud Computing and Its Applications Also see Ian Foster's blog entry http://www.gridvm.org/workshop-cloud-computing-and-its-applications.html From http://www.gridtoday.com/grid/2370981.html rPath Enables Cloud Computing for DoE, CERN RALEIGH, N.C., June 4 -- rPath, whose unique technology simplifies application distribution and management through virtual appliances, today announced that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) have been using rBuilder to deliver virtual appliances to ... http://www.gridvm.org/rpath-enables-cloud-computing-for-doe-cern.html EUCALYPTUS - Elastic Utility Computing Architecture for Linking Your Programs To Useful Systems - is an open-source software infrastructure for implementing "cloud computing" on clusters. The current interface to EUCALYPTUS is compatible with Amazon's EC2 interface, but the infrastructure is designed to support multiple client-side interfaces. May 14th, 2008: EUCALYPTUS ... http://www.gridvm.org/eucalyptus-10.html 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 ... http://www.gridvm.org/workspace-service-tp132.html From workspace-announce: I am happy to announce the availability of a science cloud (codenamed "Stratus" ;-) at the University of Florida. This cloud introduces a new feature: the use of virtual networks with virtual machines for cloud computing. The cloud is available for members of the scientific community: to obtain access ... http://www.gridvm.org/stratus-cloud-at-the-university-of-florida.html If you're feeling adventurous, there's a workspace service pre-release out (click on the pic): http://www.gridvm.org/workspace-service-tp132-release-candidate-0.html 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 ... http://www.gridvm.org/gridshib-for-globus-toolkit-v060-final.html From http://blog.xen.org/index.php/2008/04/28/xen-api-community-project/: Several community members have contacted me recently about the Xen-API utilities. I looked into this and discovered a great opportunity for community members looking for a project to contribute to. So, I am announcing a new community effort to complete the development of the Xen-API utilities. If you are ... http://www.gridvm.org/xen-api-community-call.html I'm pleased to announce the availability of Xen versions 3.1.4 and 3.2.1 -- bugfix releases in the Xen 3.1 and 3.2 series. The source repositories are available using mercurial from: http://xenbits.xensource.com/xen-3.1-testing.hg (tag 'RELEASE-3.1.4') http://xenbits.xensource.com/xen-3.2-testing.hg (tag 'RELEASE-3.2.1') Tarballs are available for download (and will soon be linked from the xen.org web pages): http://bits.xensource.com/oss-xen/release/3.1.4/xen-3.1.4.tar.gz http://bits.xensource.com/oss-xen/release/3.2.1/xen-3.2.1.tar.gz Thanks to everyone who ... http://www.gridvm.org/xen-314-and-321.html http://groups.google.com/group/cloud-computing http://www.gridvm.org/cloud-computing-discussion-group.html 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. ... http://www.gridvm.org/tutorial-virtualization-and-cloud-computing-with-globus.html Interesting #13 here (well, they're all interesting): 25 radical network research projects you should know about. This points us to Cloud Control with Distributed Rate Limiting which is a paper about distributed bandwidth management. From the conclusion: As cloud-based services transition from marketing vaporware to real, deployed systems, the demands on traditional Web-hosting ... http://www.gridvm.org/cloud-bandwidth-management.html There's been a lot of talk about the dangers of getting locked in to cloud platforms, developing an application that is only suited to one platform. Here's a, let's say... "embellished" example: Gangsta cloud wars could pivot on the traffic-driving power of Google and Microsoft/Yahoo. When you're using VMs like Xen (e.g. ... http://www.gridvm.org/cloud-lock-in-is-not-such-a-big-deal.html EC2 announced future support for adding raw, persistent block devices to VMs, a few non-Amazon people are even testing it already. Ability to create volumes between 1GB and 1TB Ability to create any FS on them after the first mount Mounted from same availability zone as the ... http://www.gridvm.org/amazon-ec2-persistent-storage.html Old news, but here's an interesting website: Online Home for the TeraGrid Planning Process. In particular, the Position Papers section. http://www.gridvm.org/teragrid-planning-site.html Fifth (and hopefully final!) release candidates are available from the public xen-3.1-testing.hg and xen-3.2-testing.hg trees. Please give these ones a spin. I hope to roll the releases early next week. -- Keir [update: http://www.gridvm.org/xen-314-and-321.html] http://www.gridvm.org/new-xen-versions-coming.html