Grid Computing

Bhavin D. Tank
[T.Y.B.Sc. (IT)] College of Computer Science and Information Technology, Junagadh. Ph. +91 - 98987 66298 E-mail: tank.infotech@yahoo.com
Abstract: Today we are in the Internet world and everyone prefers to enjoy fast access to the Internet. But due to multiple downloading, there is a chance that the system hangs up or slows down the performance that leads to the restarting of the entire process from the beginning. This is one of the serious problems that need the attention of the researchers. So we have taken this problem for our research and in this paper we are providing a layout for implementing our proposed Grid Model that can access the Internet very fast. By using our Grid we can easily download any number of files very fast depending on the number of systems employed in the Grid. We have used the concept of Grid Computing for this purpose. The Grid formulated uses the standard Globus Architecture, which is the only Grid Architecture currently used worldwide for developing the Grid.

What is Grid Computing? Grid Computing is a technique in which the idle systems in the Network and their wasted CPU cycles can be efficiently used by uniting pools of servers, storage systems and networks into a single large virtual system for resource sharing dynamically at runtime. These systems can be distributed across the globe; they're heterogeneous (some PCs, some servers, maybe mainframes and supercomputers); somewhat autonomous (a Grid can potentially access resources in different organizations). Grid computing is form of networking unlike conventional network that focus on communications among devices.

Grid computing is a method of harnessing the power of many computers in network to solve problems requiring a large numbers of processing cycles and involving huge amount of data in grid computing pcs, servers and workstations are linked together so that computing capacity is never wasted. So rather than using a network of computers simply to communicate and transfer data, grid computing taps the unused processor cycles or numerous i.e. thousands of computers. It is distributed computing taken to the next evolutionary level. The goal of grid computing is to create the illusion of a simple yet large and powerful self managing virtual computer out of large collection of connected heterogeneous system sharing various combination of resources grid. Computing is a way to enlist large no of machines to work on multipart computational problem such as circuit analysis or mechanical design. Once a proper infrastructure is in place, a user will have access to a virtual computer that is reliable and adaptable to the users, for this, there must be standard for grid computing that will allow a secure and robust infrastructure to be built. Standards such as Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) and tools such as provided by Globus Toolkit provide the necessary framework. Grid computing uses open source protocol and software called Globus. Globus software allows computes to share data, power and software. A grid user have to installed the provided grid s/w on his m/c .m/c is connected with Internet. Internet is most far reaching n/w. The user establishes his identity with a certificate authority. The user has responsibility of keeping his grid secure.

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Once the user and/or machine are authenticated, the grid software provided to the user for installing on his machine for the purposes of using the grid as well as donating to the grid. This software may be automatically reconfigured by the grid management system to know the communication address of the management nodes in the grid and user or machine identification information. In this way, the installation may be a one click operation. To use the grid, most grid systems require the user to log on to a system using a user ID that is enrolled in the grid. Once logged on, the user can query the grid and submit jobs. The user will usually perform some queries to check to see how busy the grid is, to see how his submitted jobs are progressing, and to look for resources on the grid. Grid systems usually provide command line tools as well as graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for queries. Command line tools are especially useful when the user wants to write a script. Job submission usually consists of three parts, even if there is only one command required. First, some input data and possibly the executable program or execution script file are sent to the machine to execute the job. Sending the input is called staging the input data. Second, the job is executed on the grid machine. The grid software running on the donating machine executes the program in a process on the users behalf. Third, the results of the job are sent back to the submitter. When there are a large number of sub jobs, the work required to collect the results and produce the final result is usually accomplished by a single program, usually running on the machine at the point of job submission. The data accessed by the grid jobs may simply be staged in and out by the grid system. Depending on size and no. of jobs, this can be added up to a large amount of data traffic. A job may fail due to a: 1. Programming error: The job stops part way with some program fault. 2. Hardware or power failure: The machine or devices being used stop Working in some way. 3. Communications interruption: A communication path to the machine has failed or is overloaded with other data traffic.

4. Excessive slowness: The job might be in an infinite loop or normal job Progress may be limited by another process running at a higher priority or some other form of contention. Grid applications can be designed to automate the monitoring and recovery of their own sub jobs using functions provided by the grid system software application programming interfaces (APIs). IMPORTANCE OF GRID COMPUTING: Grid computing enables the virtualization of distributed computing resources such as processing, network bandwidth, and storage capacity to create a single system image, granting users and applications seamless access to vast IT capabilities. Just as an Internet user views a unified instance of content via the World Wide Web, a Grid user essentially sees a single, large, virtual computer. Grid computing will give worldwide access to a network of distributed resources - CPU cycles, storage capacity, devices for input and output, services, whole applications, and more abstract elements like licenses and certificates. TYPES OF GRID: The three primary types of grids and are summarized below: (1) Computational Grid: A computational grid is focused on setting aside resources specifically for computing power. In this type of grid, most of the machines are high-performance servers. (2) Scavenging grid: A scavenging grid is most commonly used with large numbers of desktop machines. Machines are scavenged for available CPU cycles and other resources. Owners of the desktop machines are usually given control over when their resources are available to participate in the grid. (3) Data Grid: A data grid is responsible for housing and providing access to data across multiple organizations. Users are not concerned with where this data is located as long as they have access to the data. DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS AND VARIATIONS: One feature of distributed grids is that they can be formed from computing resources belonging to multiple individuals or organizations (known as multiple administrative domains).

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This can facilitate commercial transactions, as in utility computing, or make it easier to assemble volunteer computing networks. One disadvantage of this feature is that the computers which are actually performing the calculations might not be entirely trustworthy. The designers of the system must thus introduce measures to prevent malfunctions or malicious participants from producing false, misleading, or erroneous results, and from using the system as an attack vector. Due to the lack of central control over the hardware, there is no way to guarantee that nodes will not drop out of the network at random times. Some nodes (like laptops or dialup Internet customers) may also be available for computation but not network communications for unpredictable periods. These variations can be accommodated by assigning large work units (thus reducing the need for continuous network connectivity) and reassigning work units when a given node fails to report its results as expected. The impacts of trust and availability on performance and development difficulty can influence the choice of whether to deploy onto a dedicated computer cluster, to idle machines internal to the developing organization, or to an open external network of volunteers or contractors. In many cases, the participating nodes must trust the central system not to abuse the access that is being granted, by interfering with the operation of other programs, mangling stored information, transmitting private data, or creating new security holes. Other systems employ measures to reduce the amount of trust "client" nodes must place in the central system such as placing applications in virtual machines. WORKING: All the available resources (work stations, servers, software, storage, etc.) as well as a set of tools that could be compared to an operating system, make up the computing grid. To optimize its functioning, the resources must be defined beforehand and as precisely as possible. They may be geographically remote and work according to different rules. At the core of the system is an element called a resource broker, which handles resource supply and demand according to technical and economic criteria. Next comes a scheduler which is responsible for distributing resources to the various machines. Security and access are in turn managed by the Grid Security Infrastructure, which handles the identification of each resource solicitor as well as access authorization up to a certain level to guarantee confidentiality.

ISSUES: The success of grid computing depends on fundamental issues in 2 main areas: 1: security 2: performance (1) Security: Grids must deal with every security that any enterprise-owned or outsourced computing model faces. Security issues include secure authentication, access rights and privileges. Reliable and secure communications, perhaps with encryption, are also a requirement. Maintaining confidentiality and privacy will also be issues if you are transferring personal data. (2) Performance: For a grid performance is the main key is to deliver nontrivial qualities of service . Some grid services might fall short because the scattering and gathering steps can incur significant delay. Grid performances include resource availability and reliability, utilization and load, response time, delay and delay variation. Data Integrity is another consideration. BENEFITS OF GRID COMPUTING

1. BUSSINESS BENEFITS: ACCELERATE TIME TO RESULT

Accelerate time to results: Can help improve productivity and collaboration. Can help solve problems that were previously unsolvable. ENABLE COLLABORATION AND PROMOTE OPERATIONAL FLEXIBILITY Bring together not only IT resources but also people. How widely dispersed departments and businesses to create virtual Organizations to share data and resources. EFFICIENTLY SCALE TO MEET VARIABLE BUSINESS DEMANDS Create flexible, resilient operational infrastructures. Address rapid fluctuations in customer demands needs. Instantaneously access compute and data resources to "sense and Respond" to Needs.

INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY:
Can help give end-users uninhibited access to the computing, data and storage resources they need (when they need them) .

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 Can help equip employees to move easily through product dies phases, research Projects and faster than ever. Can help you improve optimal utilization of computing capabilities. Can help you avoid common pitfalls of over-provisioning and incurring excess costs. Can free IT organizations fro m the burden of administering disparate, Non-integrated systems.

As of late 2004, SETI had scavenged 1.83 million years of CPU time from 4.9 million users in 226 countries .It had used this grid to perform 4.5*10( power)21 floating-point operations Experts say that 10(power)21 -one sextillion-is the approximate number of grains of sand on all of Earth's beaches and deserts. It is just one order of magnitude shy of the estimated number of stars in the visible universe.

2. INFRASTRUCTURE OPTIMIZATION: 3.

4.

Consolidate workload management. Reduce cycle times. INCREASE ACCESS TO DATA AND COLLABORATION: Federate data and distribute it globally. Support large multi-disciplinary collaboration.. Enable collaboration across organizations and among businesses. RESILIENT, HIGHLY AVAILABLE INFRASTRUCTURE: Balance workloads. Foster business community Enable recovery and failure.

Some SETI observations have been conducted using the radio telescope 3: The Rice Genome Program:

Applications: 1: Bio-Informatics: Bioinformatics analysis of data produced by complete genome sequencing projects is one of the major challenges. Integrating up-to-date databanks and relevant algorithms is a clear requirement of such an analysis. Grid computing would be a viable solution to distribute algorithms and data, computing and storage resources for Genomics. When bioinformatics grid server receives the computational requests from the client, it locates a suitable node in the grid to perform the mathematical computation according to the users requirement and task allocation rule, or integrates a virtual supercomputer to perform the larger computational requests from users..

2: Grid Computing In SETI:

SETI, the search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence uses a huge number of Internetconnected computers to download the results during idle times.

Bioinformatics research leads to a lot of information collected worldwide for which large databases should be maintained .Grid computing solves this problem. Grid computing would be a viable solution to distribute algorithms and data, computing and storage resources for Genomics. Finding a single genome of Rice (scientific name Oryza sativa) can take a lot of time which measures up to months examining all the base pairs which are in millions These data is stored in data repositories. Hence we require a technology not only to visualize analyze DNA data but also the integration and exchange of information on a gene or coding regions from different international collaborative databases needs to be done in a careful and in a robust manner .Grid Technology Solves this problem. Grid Technology enables sharing of bioinformatics data from different files by creating a virtual organization of data. So the collection of databases generated during the research work on RICE is collected and maintained by a grid which helps in posing Queries on a particular type of Rice.

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4: A simple Hello world Example: Let us consider some cases of web client-server applications like Video streaming Game serving, File downloading etc. So an approach to provide a scalable solution is to distribute the application even to the other servers that run the same application. A Network dispatcher is the entry point for an application but does not run the application , rather the servers which are connected onto the same LAN handle the workload and answer the queries of the client.

ADVANTAGES: Can solve larger, more complex problems in a shorter time Easier to collaborate with other organizations Make better use of existing hardware DISADVANTAGES: Grid software and standards are still evolving Learning curve to get started Non-interactive job submission Conclusion It is important to know that grid is not a silver bullet that can take any application and run it a 1000 times faster without the need for buying any more machines or software. Grid computing appears to be a promising trend for three reasons: (1) Its ability to make more cost-effective use of a given amount of computer resources. (2) As a way to solve problems that can't be approached without an enormous amount of computing power. (3) Because it suggests that the resources of many computers can be cooperatively and perhaps synergistically harnessed and managed as collaboration towards a common objective.

Grid computing used in Hello world Example. Let us consider an example: A network dispatcher (or) Front end server waits for client requests. When connected the client is given back a ticket and an application service IP address of where to connect. The application answers HELLO WORLD when the client connects to it . The application is started on the application servers by the front end server. The Executable for the client is Hello client and takes the front end server host name as parameter.

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