Date and time

Friday 13 November, 9:00 - 12:30.

This workshop is offered at 50% of the normal workshop rate, as ARCS is meeting 50% of the cost for participants.

Description

This workshop provides an overview of the ARCS National Grid from a user perspective. The workshop will broadly outline compute resources (clusters and applications) that researchers can access at each of the member HPC. It will identify primary information sources and means of acquiring access to compute resources through the Grid, including resources available freely to all researchers.

The workshop will address authentication of users and their authorisation for ARCS Grid access. Certificates including short-lived certificates, and their usage and applicability will be discussed. The concept of Virtual Organisations (VOs) will be introduced and the ARCS tool for managing certificates and for VO membership, Grix, will be described and demonstrated. The Australian Access Federation (AAF) will be introduced along with institutional Identity Providers (IdPs) and their relationship with the AAF, the ARCS Access Service and the ARCS IdP.

The workshop provides an overview of end-user tools for using the Grid. These include: direct use through ssh and pbs, Grisu clients, web clients and using other custom or value-added interfaces for particular applications. A number of applications will be demonstrated.

The support for developers provided by the Grisu back end web services will be briefly described. This will focus on what is possible with the services that ARCS provides for developers and discusses examples of applications that make use of the web services to develop more complex work flows. Finally, future developments in Grid technology and in the tools provided by ARCS, including the development of an ARCS Applications portal, and its ultimate integration with the ARCS Compute Cloud will be briefly outlined.

Outline

1. Overview of ARCS Grid. This section will provide a brief description of the members of the ARCS grid, focusing on their policy and procedures for using their resources, applications available at each site and tools such as the NCI Software Map and Status.arcs that provide valuable information to ARCS Grid users.
   30 minutes
2. Accessing the ARCS Grid: authentication and authorisation. This section will introduce the different types of certificates and how to acquire and use them. The ARCS certificate management tool, Grix, will be demonstrated. The use of institutional identities and institutional identity providers in the context of the Australian Access Federation, as well as the shared token and other attributes used to authorise services will be described. Use of the ARCS Access Service and the ARCS IdP will be demonstrated.
   45 minutes
3. Accessing the ARCS Grid: job submission and monitoring tools. This section describes the various steps in submitting jobs on the ARCS grid and the different tools for doing this. Each different approach is demonstrated. Grisu, the ARCS-developed Grid submission tool will be demonstrated.
   60 minutes
4. Developing new work flows or applications of the ARCS Grid. Grisu provides a back end service that has been implemented within a web service framework providing an API for developers. These web services can be used to build new and more complex work flow  using a range of client technologies. Other tools such as the SLCS Delegation Service (SDS) which support third party application developers will be introduced. Examples of clients that add value to the Grisu back end are demonstrated.
   45 minutes
5. Further development of ARCS Grid and its tool. Planned enhancements to the ARCS Grid are described. These include: integration with the data fabric and incorporation of meta-scheduling to be part of the ARCS computing cloud, other new services and support for more complex work flow building.
   30 minutes

Who should attend

This workshop will be of most benefit to those who are potential users of the ARCS Grid and want to find out more about
what resources are available and what tools are provided by ARCS for Grid users.

About the presenters

Jim McGovern. Jim is manager of the Systems Services team at ARCS. The ARCS Systems Services team is responsible for operating the ARCS Grid. Prior to joining ARCS Jim worked as a Senior Manager in ITS and before that as an Associate Professor of Computing all at RMIT University.
Darran Carey. Darran is assistant manager of the Systems Services Team at ARCS, located at iVEC in Perth. Darran has extensive experience with grids and High Performance Computing (HPC) and provides technical leadership to the operation and development of the ARCS Grid.
Sam Morrison. Sam is a systems administrator with ARCS based at VPAC in Melbourne. He has extensive experience in the administration of the ARCS Grid and HPC, as well as in the development of tools to support grid use. Sam is a leading authority on grid security and is one of the CA managers for the ARCS Grid.
Sean Fleming. Sean is a software developer for ARCS based at iVEC in Perth. He has extensive experience in compute applications, and has developed visualisation and modelling tools for computational chemistry applications that use the grid.
Markus Binsteiner. Markus is a software developer for ARCS based at VPAC. Markus has been the main developer of easy to use tools for grid use, including Grisu, the main systems for Grid submission. Markus is working on new releases of Grisu and new web-based interfaces to the Grisu backend.
Garth Denley. Garth is a systems administrator for ARCS based at eRSA where he provides support to various user communities in grid submission using the ARCS tools.
Vladimir Mencl. Vlad is an eResearch consultant for BeSTGrid, the NZ Grid and works closely with ARCS in the development and deployment of grid tools.