JISC

Start date: 1 October 2003

End date: 31 December 2004

Funding programme: Support for e-Research programme

Project website: http://groups.inf.ed.ac.uk/ogsaconfig

JISC theme(s): e-Research

This project is motivated by the observation that many existing Grid applications have very specific requirements for the configuration of the fabric on which the service is deployed. The inflexible nature of current fabric configuration techniques means that such applications are often restricted to running on fabrics which are carefully hand-configured to meet the requirements of the particular application. Furthermore, a configuration suitable for one application is often unsuitable for other applications, and finding a compromise configuration can be difficult.

Aims and Objectives 

The overall aim of the project is to investigate the extent to which dynamic configuration techniques may be used to reconfigure aspects of a Grid fabric to meet the requirements of a range of different OGSA services. 

The specific objectives are to:

• Survey existing Grid applications to determine their configuration requirements, and to identify the types of reconfiguration which would be necessary for fabrics to support a wider range of services.
• Propose an architecture which will allow OGSA services to specify their configuration requirements, and service requests to automatically initiate the appropriate reconfiguration.
• Implement a prototype of the above architecture which is sufficient to demonstrate the validity of the concepts. (This will not be production implementation.)

Project Methodology  

The project will commence with case studies of existing Grid applications. These will be used to inform the design of an architecture for describing the fabric configuration requirements of Grid services, and reconfiguring some aspects of the fabric, on demand, according to these requirements. A prototype implementation of this architecture will constructed using LCFG as the configuration deployment engine.

Implications / Deliverables / Stakeholders 

The project will deliver a report on the configuration requirements of existing, and envisaged future Grid applications. This is expected to influence fabric architects, designers of configuration tools, and possibly application designers, to improve the inter-fabric portability of Grid applications. The proposed architecture, and demonstration implementation will provide techniques for fabric managers and designers of configuration systems to support Grid services with a range of different configuration requirements.