Comparsion of Grid Portals
We summarise several grid portals and/or grid job submission systems.
Our ideal portal would
- Be easily to use and extend. Realistically this means excellent assistance to install and use it. Email is ok, but phone and face-to-face contact with developers is best.
- Actively being developed.
- Easy to add new users, yet secure.
- Handles certificates 'well'. Possibly mapping between groups, certificates and Unix accounts.
- Submit multiple jobs.
- Monitor and control jobs
- Parameter sweep.
- View data, allow extensions to visualise, etc.
Gridport
- http://gridport.npaci.edu
- A set of Perl modules which wrap Globus (also java,python)
- Designed to be used by others - they take the modules and reuse them.
- Certificate based portal authentication.
- http://hotpage.npaci.edu is an example.
Gridsphere
- http://www.gridsphere.org
- by Gridlab at AEI, Germany
- GPDK was the previous iteration (this is now unsupported)
- Based on Portlets (composable elements to a webpage)
- Use JSP custom tags to build an interface
- Medium size mailing list and a few active users.
- Many techs (Castor, Cactus, Portlets) - lots to learn.
- Designed as a portal with Grid in mind, but Grid is added via portlets.
- Appears well established.
- Job submission lower priority.
- https://portal.gridlab.org/ is a demo you can use.
- Looked JetSpeed and didn't use.
OGCE: Open Grid Computing Environment
- http://www.ogce.org
- Serveral USA university collaborating
- Based on JetSpeed, Tomcat and Globus 3
- 'All in one' package (128mb download!)
- Portlets for many purposes, including GridFTP, GRAM, File Browsing.
- Job submission one part of large project.
- AstroGrid dumped Jetspeed.
- No demo, screenshots at http://www.ogce.org/screenshots.php
ASC: Astrophysics Simulation Collaboration
- https://www.ascportal.org/project/progress.html
- precursor to Gridsphere. Now out of date (webpage updated 2001)
- Uses Cactus code architecture, with extensions to perform most of the tasks we need, but ...
- Works be user starting there 'CactusZeus' job on a machine; this jobs REPORTS back to the portal which displays the results. The portal allows users to view current status/timestep, visualise data.
- This communcation is NOT globus, but XML/SOAP.
- Some out-of-date work with Globus 2.2, not supported or useable.
- New work being done of Cactus simulation portals (Washington Uni).
- Demo is dead.
Other bits and bobs
Extreme Uni Indiana
- http://www.extreme.indiana.edu
- MyProxy (part of COG) easy-to-use API for portlets
- Portlets for basic job submission (not useful really)
- GridFTP file browser portlet
Gridport |
Perl (python,java) |
- |
yes |
yes, but hosted by npaci |
no |
yes |
yes |
|
Gridsphere |
Java |
Custom? |
yes |
not listed, but active mailing list |
no |
yes |
yes |
|
OGCE |
Java |
Jetspeed |
yes |
not listed, empty mailing list |
no |
yes? |
yes |
|
ASC |
C++ / cactus |
- |
old |
no |
no |
no? |
no |
|
Nimrod |
C++ / python |
- |
yes |
no |
yes |
yes |
no |
-- BrettBeeson - 02 Dec 2003