April '06 issue of Globus Consortium Journal is here

This month's Globus Consortium Journal is here. It focuses on The Linux / Grid Relationship.

I have not read all the articles, but after going through them, I found Operating System Performance Demands of Grid by Adam Fineberg to be most impressive - a must read. Will try to write my thought on the remaining later.

You can find it here:
http://www.globusconsortium.org/journal/20060330/

The articles include the following:

• Time to Embrace Linux / Grid Traction by Greg Nawrocki
  
• Linux Kernel Virtualization Support by Andrew Morton
• Lead On-Demand VP at IBM Weighs in on Grid Progress - Ian Foster and Irving Wladawsky-Berger
• The Flexibility of Linux by Carl Drisko
• A Historical Perspective on Linux Clustering by Donald Becker
• Operating System Performance Demands of Grid by Adam Fineberg

Filed Under:

• Linux

Call for Papers: GridNets 2006

Call for Papers
===============


GridNets 2006
Third International Workshop on Networks for Grid Applications
Co-Sponsored by IEEE Communications Society and Create-Net

Co-located with IEEE Communications Society/Create-Net Broadnets 2006
San Jose, California, USA, October 1-2, 2006

http://www.gridnets.org



Grid developers and practicioners are increasingly realising the
importance of an efficient network support. Entire classes of
applications would greatly benefit by a network-aware Grid middleware,
able to effectively manage the network resource in terms of scheduling,
access and use. Conversely, the peculiar requirements of Grid
applications provide stimulating drivers for new challenging research
towards the development of Grid-aware networks.

Cooperation between Grid middleware and network infrastructure driven by
a common control plane is a key factor to effectively empower the global
Grid platform for the execution of network-intensive applications,
requiring massive data transfers, very fast and low-latency connections,
and stable and guaranteed transmission rates. Big e-science projects, as
well as industrial and engineering applications for data analysis, image
processing, multimedia, or visualisation just to name a few are awaiting
an efficient Grid network support. They would be boosted by a global
Grid platform enabling end-to-end dynamic bandwidth allocation,
broadband and low-latency access, interdomain access control, and other
network performance monitoring capabilities.

The Gridnets 2006 workshop will provide a focused and highly interactive
forum where researchers and technologists will have the opportunity to
present and discuss leading research, developments, and future
directions in the Grid networking area.

As an IEEE publication, the proceedings will also be accessible through
the IEEE Xplore website and other digital libraries. Best papers will be
considered for publication in a special section of Elsevier Future
Generation Computer Systems (FGCS) - The International Journal of Grid
Computing: Theory, Methods and Application".


Scope
------

The GridNets 2006 workshop will focus on research issues and challenges
as well as lessons learned from experience. Topics of interest include
and are not limited to:

* New concepts and requirements to shape the design of eScience and
Research Networks
* Integration of advanced optical networking technologies and
architectures (OPS, OBS) for the Grid environment
* Coordination of network resources with other Grid resources (CPU,
Storage)
* Layer interactions: optical layer with higher layer protocols
* Grid advanced resource reservation
* Self-healing Grid networks
* Traffic characteristics and performance analysis
* New architectures and technologies that address Grid requirements
* Experience on production-level optical network infrastructures
* Middleware design and grid layer integration issues for accessing
and managing network resources
* Routing and scheduling for dynamic bandwidth control
* Monitoring, provisioning, brokering of network resources
* New multi-service frameworks and models
* End-to-end application level control of network resource
* Peer-to-peer approach for Grid networks
* Network support for wireless Grids
* Novel data transport protocols designed for new application services
* Data replication and multicasting strategies and protocols
* Fault-tolerance, protection, security, and scalability issues
related to connecting large number of sites
* Network cost, performance, and incentive issues
* Grid network simulation
* Identification of Grid peculiarities that network mechanisms can
build upon



Important Dates
-----------------

Paper Submission Deadline: May 26, 2006
Paper Acceptance Notification: June 30, 2006
Final paper submission: July 31, 2006

(For submission instructions, refer to http://www.gridnets.org )



Organizing Committee
====================

Workshop co-chairs: Pascale Vicat-Blanc Primet (ENS Lyon), Michael Welzl
(University of Innsbruck)
Workshop vice-chair: Piero Spinnato (Create-Net)
Technical Program Committee chairs: Wayne Clark (Cisco), Yufeng Xin (MCNC)
Panel chair: Bela Berde (Alcatel)
Publicity chair: Antoine Pichot (Europe) (Alcatel), Tomohiro Kudoh
(Asia) (AIST), Brian Tierny (USA) (LBL)
Steering Committee: Imrich Chlamtac (Create-Net), Gigi Karmous-Edwards
(MCNC), Michael Welzl (University of Innsbruck)
Conference coordination and registration: Kitti H. Kovacs (ICST)



Program Committee
=================

Bill Allcock - Argonne National Lab
Lina Battestilli - MCNC
Micah Beck - University of Tennessee
Augusto Casaca - INESC
Piero Castoldi - Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna
Cees De Laat - Universiteit van Amsterdam
Peter Dinda - Northwestern University
Jose Fernandes - FCCN
Tiziana Ferrari - INFN - CNAF
Gabriele Garzoglio - Fermi National Lab
Wolfgang Gentzsch - D-Grid
Wolfgang Gerteis - SAP Belfast
Doan Hoang - University of Technology, Sydney
David Hutchison - Lancaster University
Adriana Iamnitchi - University of South Florida
Admela Jukan - Universite de Quebec
Jussi Kangasharju - Technical University Darmstadt
Gigi Karmous-Edwards - MCNC
Dieter Kranzlmüller - University of Linz
Joe Mambretti - Northwestern Univ
Max Mühlhäuser - Technical University Darmstadt
Nicholas Race - Lancaster University
Matei Ripeanu - University of British Columbia
Volker Sander - University of Applied Sciences Aachen
Dimitra Simeonidou - University of Essex
Oliver Yu - University of Illinois at Chicago
Yufeng Xin -MCNC

Filed Under:

• Grid-Computing
• Conference

Grid Computing Book: Globus Toolkit 4: Programming Java Services

Title: Globus Toolkit 4: Programming Java Services
Authors: Borja Sotomayor and Lisa Childers
Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers / Elsevier
Buy from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0123694043
Review: By Greg Nawrocki (Complete review avaiable at: http://weblog.infoworld.com/gridmeter/archives/2006/03/recommended_rea.html)

The very first part on key concepts and the first chapter in the GT4 security section are amongst the best and most concise explanations of those topics I have ever read, and believe me, I've read plenty. The explanations on key concepts of grid computing, OGSA, WSRF and Web Services may indeed be just the medicine the confused Grid masses need to make the light bulb go on it their heads.

If you buy this book for nothing more than the first 39 pages, and the first 12 pages of the GT4 Security section, you will walk away happy.

Sample Chapter: http://books.elsevier.com/bookscat/samples/0123694043/Sample_Chapters/01~frontmatter.pdf

Filed Under:

• Grid-Computing
• Books
• Programming

Web Services specifications for resources, events, and management backed by HP, IBM, Intel, and Microsoft

HP, IBM, Intel & Microsoft have anounced on March 15, 2006, a roadmap titled: "Toward Converging Web Service Standards for Resources, Events, and Management". A very welcome step and hailed greatly by the Grid and Web Service community. The only big company missing from the scene is Sun - lets wait and see what stand they take on this as I assuem they were backing IBM on WSRF and related specs.

The efforts according to the roadmap, involves converging various overlapping specifications available for the similar purposes. e.g., every grid developer, architect is familiar with WSRF (Web Service Resource Framework) and WS-N (Web Service Notification); as these are the basis of the latest version Globus Toolkit (GT4), but there exists another competing set of specifications such as WS-Management, that the microsoft platform developers have to deal with.

Ian Foster, the grid guru and architect of various grid and web service related specifications has the following to say in his commentary:

The published roadmap suggests that the new specifications that are to be developed will include essentially all of the core concepts introduced back in 2001 in the Open Grid Services Infrastructure (OGSI) [5] and subsequently incorporated in WSRF/WS-N [6]. So this initiative is good news: it promises to deliver what the Grid and Globus communities have been working towards for close to 5 years: industry-wide standards for Web Services-based systems management.

The strong commitment stated by HP, IBM, Intel, and Microsoft to the concepts, mechanisms, and interfaces encoded in WSDM/WSRF/WS-N and WS-Man/WS-Transfer/WS-Eventing should provide developers and users with considerable confidence that this technology is here for the long haul.

I have not read the complete roadmap and will post back with more details once I am done with the piled up work. By that time, following are some relevant quotes from the roadmap.

The result [of the effort] will eventually provide an industry-wide set of standards for resources access and eventing that will be useful for many scenarios in management integration, manageability, and grid computing,

On a related note, I just read a news item that OASIS has approved WS-Security 1.1

More later ...

Links:
Roadmap specifications
Dedicated IBM Web page
Dedicated HP Webpage
Ian Foster's commentary on the roadmap
OASIS stamps approval on WS-Security 1.1

Filed Under:

• Grid-Computing
• Standards
• Enterprise