Monitoring applications on the Grid
Grid technologies have extended cluster and distributed computing concepts to allow more efficient sharing of all available resources. Today's grids consist of high-end computers and workstations, storage systems and databases that work in tandem across private and public networks. Their most distinguishing feature is that they are configured from components managed by independent organisations. The CROSSGRID project was funded by the Fifth Framework Programme to implement new Grid components and support applications that require high computational resources for handling excessive amounts of data. Research institutes from 11 European countries joined their forces to develop Grid-based systems for pretreatment planning in surgical procedures, as well as decision support systems for weather forecast and flood prevention. All these applications required new tools for monitoring the application's performance, providing authorised access to distributed data and managing resources engaged to run the application. To provide users that have limited knowledge of the underlying Grid technology with access to advanced Grid services, an 'application portal' was developed by project partner Algosystems S.A. This is a web-based interface with multiple portlets, through which the potential user would be able to submit jobs to the Grid. First, the user is authorised to use the facilities of the portal by authenticating or obtaining their own security credentials stored in a MyProxy server. As soon as a valid certificate and private keys are retrieved through the 'Proxy manager' portlet, information from a wide variety of sources is made available in an easy to use manner. Information on computing elements in the Grid that can meet the requirements of jobs specified is made available through the 'Job list match' portlet. Furthermore, the status of previously submitted jobs can be found out with the use of the 'Job log info' portlet. Each portlet has been designed to manipulate and display data almost independently, as if it was a web page on its own. These software tools continue to be supported beyond the end of the end of the CROSSGRID project. Moreover, solutions proposed within the CROSSGRID project are being adopted by further research initiatives under the Sixth Framework Programme.