Description
The IT Leadership Council (ITLC) has charged the UC Research Computing Group (UCRCG) with the creation of a secure Computing Grid to link computing resources and autonomous organizations at the University of California. The purpose of the UC Grid initiative is to
Develop a secure Grid of computing, storage, and network technology resources in support of research,
Augment UC’s research technology infrastructure in an interoperable fashion to facilitate the sharing of resources,
Optimize performance and utilization, and
Deliver services that address researchers’ needs while encouraging behavior that benefits the common good.
The first task is to provide a Grid infrastructure in order to expose existing computing resources to the UC research community and to facilitate the use of those resources as appropriate to existing research needs and funding. The UCRCG plans to create this infrastructure by:
Creating a Campus Grid at each University of California campus by deploying
the UCLA Grid Portal (UGP) software, and applying the UCLA Grid architecture,
which integrates computing resources into a Grid by the attachment of Grid
Appliances. The use of Grid Appliances allows for the attachment of independently
owned compute clusters to the Grid without changing the way the administrators
of those clusters do business. UGP provides a single intuitive web-based interface
to all of the resources in a Grid. UGP and the Grid Appliances were developed
by UCLA Academic Technology Services (ATS), which has been successfully running
a Grid at UCLA since June 2004. Each Campus Grid will expose independently
operated campus resources to all researchers belonging to that campus.
Creating a UC-wide Grid called the UC Grid. The UC Grid will allow for the sharing of resources from different campuses. Every user of a Campus Grid will also be able to access the UC Grid to use multi-campus resources. The UC Grid will deploy the same UGP software as the Campus Grids, thus providing the same user interface as the Campus Grids do. It will connect to the Grid Appliances already installed on the campuses as part of the Camps Grids; additional Grid Appliances will not be required.
Deploying the Grid Certificate Authority (CA) for all the Campus Grids and the UC Grid at the UC Grid level. This will provide each user with a single credential that will be recognized by all the Grids, campus and UC, thus making the sharing of computer resources between campuses possible and with single sign on. Grid certificates meet the X.509 certificate standard [1]. Adoption of the Grid CA and certificates will not prevent the adoption of another UC-wide authentication service at a later date.
5. Using resource pools to provide researchers with the most appropriate compute resources and software anywhere in the UC system according to their compute requirements. This will allow each Grid Portal to manage resource allocation within its Grid in order to optimize performance and utilization.
Additional Information
September 2006 presentations to the IT Leadership Council:
