Grid Truths

By Rich Wellner

Thanks to Brand Autopsy, I'm reminded of Google's Ten Things statement. Some of the things they consider to be core to their success are also core to making grid computing work.

Focus on the user and all else will follow

For Google this means a clean interface, fast response and honest results. Globus Toolkit and Cluster Express follow this idiom really well.

In the case of Globus Toolkit, their focus has long been allowing users to gain access to a wide variety of resources in a user centric model. The philosophy should be that the user get a single sign-on and be able to use that to move data, get monitoring information, submit jobs and delegate authority to other entities on the grid.

For Cluster Express the idea is to take Globus Toolkit and make it dead simple to install even while combining it with some of the other best open source tools around like Grid Engine and Ganglia. These are the tools users and administrators need to operate a cluster. The result has been a thousand downloads in the first few weeks this user focused package has been available.

It's best to do one thing really, really well

Grid computing is about managing resources effectively. That's it. We're not about making hardware, finding oil reserves, curing cancer or projecting financial markets. Because of that application agnosticism, grid computing works in all those domains and hundreds more.

Democracy on the web works

Grid computing, especially in the open source world, works via standards and many people working together on many different pieces of a complete solution. Scientific users like those at Argonne National Lab and Fermilab collaborate on data storage and movement standards. The best ideas really do win and the results are solutions that scale to billions of files and transfer rates at theoretical maximums even on multi-gigabit rates.

You don't need to be at your desk to need an answer.

With previous generations of cluster management tools, an admin or user had to be at their own computer to understand in any detail what state their jobs were in. Even though the grid allows them to access resources across multiple computers, it still also allows them to manage their workload from web portals, releasing them from any particular desk.

The need for information crosses all borders.

One of the largest stumbling blocks users used to face in HPC was getting access to the data they needed. Tools like Reliable File Transfer Service, Replica Location Service and GridFTP allow information to be scheduled and moved on a global basis.

You can be serious without a suit.

Amen.

Great just isn't good enough.

Grid computing is 11 years old now and has been helping to do great science for most of them. But the developers and users keep pushing the envelope and finding new and better ways to get more done.

Expect that to continue next year.