Grid Services
Grid (compute and data) services as provided by ARCS
The following grid services are made available to ARCS users.
Many of the links in the table below will take you away from the ARCS Web Site, some will go to the ARCS Wiki pages, some elsewhere.
| Service | Status | Details | Notes |
| Accounting | Production | Records of usage kept and made available via a web service. | |
| Authentication | Production | Based on an IGTF approved x509 Certificate Authority. Active member of the APGridPMA. | ARCS suggest you use the Grix tool to apply for and manage your certificates. If you need a host certificate, or want to use command line tools to generate it, please see here. At some stage, ARCS will use AAF Shibboleth authentication services. |
| Authorisation | Production | A Virtual Organisation based system using VOMRS | Grix will provide you with an easy to use interface to the ARCS VOMRS system. Please send an email to ARCS Help Line if you need a Virtual Organisation created for your application. |
| Data Movement - GridFTP | Production | GridFTP provides fast, GSI authenticated file transfer. ARCS have an extensive GridFTP network available at all ARCS Member sites. |
ARCS can advise on various client tools whether its a graphical interface or a command line client used in a script. |
|
Data Management - SRB |
Production | SRB provides efficient data movement and management where the storage is virtualised. It also has metadata capabilities. | ARCS has a solution for staging data in SRB repositories into and out of compute jobs. |
| Data replication | Production | LDR is currently being used by several projects to replicate data from instruments or existing data sets. | Other replication technologies are also under investigation. |
| Data Fabric | Development | Provides virtual storage to users or VOs which integrates well with ARCS and ANDS services. Incorporates facilities for data movement and replication. | Currently in planning and prototyping. The technology will probably be SRB. |
| Managed file transfers | Testing | This service will help optimise the available network and filesystem infrastructure in the same way that a queuing system optimises the use of a compute cluster. | The file transfer service which is part of the gLite software stack is under testing for this role. |
| Information Services | Development | Based on MDS this service shows software and system resources suitable for meta schedulers. |
Please see the ARCS Wiki MDS pages. It includes sample code showing how developers can use the ARCS MDS. Considerable information is already available and may meet some user's needs. However the specification may change and the content is not as accurate as we would like it to be. ARCS is working towards resolving these issues. People are welcome to use it and please report your experiences to the Operations Group. |
| Job Submission - GRAMS based | Production | Using VDT which in turn uses Globus this service allows job submission and data staging. | Suitable for using with a range of existing Grid middleware, this service is regarded by many as the default grid interface. There is a number of example scripts that use this service. |
| Job Submision - Grisu based | Testing | This service is most conveniently used with the Grisu Client, a framework and collection of libraries that allow relatively easy creation of application specific tools for Job Launch |
This service is operational and many end users are routinely using it. However, the service itself, and grisu are under constant development and do change. Many people find it does meet their needs despite not being "Production". |
| Monitoring Services | Production | Web site showing gateway status and tools such as Inca showing job readiness. | |
| Myproxy | Production | Proxy Services | Two, redundant machines, in a DNS round robin pair. |
Status keys
- Production - ARCS believes the service to be robust and fully functional.
- Testing - The service is being tested, it may well be fully functional but ARCS warns you that its quite possible it will not behave in the expected manner. May be combined with "Incomplete".
- Incomplete - The service is (probably) robust and reliable but not all functionality may be present. May be combined with 'Testing'.
- Development - The service is under development and generally you should not use it without explicit arrangements with the ARCS Grid team. Results could be quite unpredictable.
To be resolved -
Nimrod see http://nimrod.grid.apac.edu.au/APACNimrodDoc.html