NorduGrid ARC v0.4 Release Announcement

April 13, 2004

After two years of development and testing, the NorduGrid collaboration is pleased to announce release 0.4 of its Grid middleware (also known as the Advanced Resource Connector), the first official release of this software.

Since the first development release (May 2002) the middleware has been deployed and used in production environments in many countries. Emphasis has been put on scalability, stability, reliability and performance of the middleware.

Description

The NorduGrid middleware (or the Advanced Resource Connector, ARC) is an open source software solution enabling production quality computational and data grids. The middleware integrates computing resources (commodity computing clusters managed by a batch system or standalone workstations) and Storage Elements, making them available via a common secure grid layer. The middleware builds upon standard open source solutions like the OpenLDAP, OpenSSL, SASL and Globus Toolkit 2 (GT2) libraries.

Features

ARC provides a reliable implementation of fundamental grid services, such as information services, resource discovery and monitoring, job submission and management, brokering, data management and resource management. Most of these services are provided through the security layer of GSI. NorduGrid provides innovative solutions essential for a production quality middleware: the Grid Manager, gridftpd (the ARC/NorduGrid GridFTP server), the information model and providers (NorduGrid schema), the User Interface and broker (a local broker integrated into the user interface), the extended Resource Specification Language (xRSL) and the monitoring system.

ARC main components are:

• Grid services running on the resources: the Grid Manager, the gridftpd and the information services.
• Indexing services for the resources and data.
• Clients making intelligent use of the distributed information and data available on the grid.

System requirements

• For a Cluster Grid resource (nordugrid-cluster), a Unix cluster running a Local Resource Management System is needed.
• For a Storage Element (nordugrid-se) Grid resource, a Unix box with some storage capacity is needed.
• For a client any recent Unix box will do.

Availability

The middleware is free to be deployed anywhere by anybody. Pre-built binary releases for a dozen of Linux platforms can be downloaded from ftp.nordugrid.org.

The software is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

The NorduGrid repository hosts the source code, and provides all the required external software which are not part of a standard Linux distribution.

Installation notes

NorduGrid ARC middleware has two main components: the server and the client part. Server is typically installed on a computing resource by a system administrator, while the client can be set up anywhere and needs no system administrator privileges. Detailed installation instructions are distributed with the middleware documentation and are available at the Web site:

• Server: http://www.nordugrid.org/documents/ng-server-install.html
• Client: http://www.nordugrid.org/documents/ng-client-install.html

Known issues

• Currently the only fully supported LRMS are the PBS flavors.
• Some server-side services require root privileges.
• No explicit support for clusters without a shared file system.
• Portability is limited by the Globus Toolkit 2 libraries which means the middleware is restricted to few Unixes and is tested only on Linux.
• Storage Element is limited to disk arrays.
• No satisfactory accounting, logging and bookkeeping system is provided.
• No cluster-level sandboxing is provided for grid jobs apart from the standard Unix access controls. No fine grained authorization for computing resources.
• No secure access to the information system.
• Configuration could be improved.

Support

User support and site installation assistance is provided via the request tracking system available at . In addition, NorduGrid runs a couple of mailing lists, among which the nordugrid-discuss mailing list is a general forum for all kind of issues related to the NorduGrid ARC middleware.

NorduGrid deploys the Bugzilla problem tracking system. Feature and enhancement requests, as well as problems, should be reported there.

Contact information is kept updated on the www.nordugrid.org web site.

Acknowledgments

The NorduGrid ARC developers would like to thank:

• NorduNet2 programme for early support.
• High Energy Physics departments of the following universities: Niels Bohr Institute, Lund University, Oslo University, Uppsala University, Bergen University, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm University and Helsinki Institute of Physics, for hosting the collaboration.
• Nordic Council of Ministers for occasional support.