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Computational Science, Engineering & Technology Series
ISSN 1759-3158
CSETS: 21
PARALLEL, DISTRIBUTED AND GRID COMPUTING FOR ENGINEERING
Edited by: B.H.V. Topping, P. Iványi
Chapter 4

Towards a World Wide Grid: Integrating Service Grids and Desktop Grids

P. Kacsuk

Laboratory of Parallel and Distributed Systems, MTA, SZTAKI, Budapest, Hungary

Full Bibliographic Reference for this chapter
P. Kacsuk, "Towards a World Wide Grid: Integrating Service Grids and Desktop Grids", in B.H.V. Topping, P. Iványi, (Editors), "Parallel, Distributed and Grid Computing for Engineering", Saxe-Coburg Publications, Stirlingshire, UK, Chapter 4, pp 49-82, 2009. doi:10.4203/csets.21.4
Keywords: service grid, desktop grid, World Wide Grid, EDGeS, BOINC, EGEE.

Summary
After the Introduction this chapter consists of five more sections and the Conclusions. The Introduction explains why the subject of establishing a World Wide Grid is important for the grid user community. Section 2 summarizes the most important features of Service Grids (SG) and Desktop Grids (DG), and compares them according to various criteria including the number of resource donors and the number of users. Public and Private Desktop Grids are distinguished within the class of Desktop Grids. Section 3 explains how to integrate Service Grids at the middleware and application levels. Considering the middleware level integration Section 3.1 surveys the state-of-the-art techniques used by various research projects in the world. For the application level integration Section 3.2 proposes the introduction of Meta-brokers and Advance Grid Portals (AGP) and shows how the interconnected SGs can be accessed from the AGPs in a user transparent way.

Section 4 deals with the integration of Desktop Grids at both the middleware and application levels. Section 4.1 shows the main principles of the hierarchical DG concept of SZTAKI Desktop Grid and gives several examples where and how this approach can advantageously be exploited. In order to solve the application level integration of DGs Section 4.2 introduces a new bridge architecture that enables the interconnection of Advance Grid Portals and BOINC systems. In this way grid users can transparently execute the parameter sweep type nodes of their workflows in various BOINC-based DG systems. The bridge shown in Section 4.2 is generalized in Section 5.1 in order to enable the transfer of jobs and work units between any SGs and DGs. Then Section 5.1.1 explains how to use this generic grid to grid bridge (3G Bridge) in order to realize a BOINC -> EGEE bridge. Section 5.1.2 describes the architecture of the reverse direction EGEE -> DG bridge. Both the BOINC -> EGEE bridge and the EGEE -> DG bridge are used for the middleware level integration of SGs and DGs. Section 5.2 illustrates that using the 3G Bridge technology Advance Grid Portals like the gUSE portal developed in SZTAKI can be connected to any SGs and DGs and a built-in meta-broker of the AGP enables the dynamic, user transparent and efficient distribution of PS nodes among the connected SGs and DGs.

Based on the technologies (Meta-broker, Advance Grid Portal, DG hierarchy, 3G Bridge) described in the previous sections the vision of a World Wide Grid (WWG) is introduced and explained in Section 6. The current obstacles and their possible future solutions are also discussed at the end of this Section.

Finally, Conclusions shows that all the components of the proposed WWG have already been implemented and deployed either as a prototype (Meta-broker, EGEE -> DG bridge) or as a production system (gUSE Advance Grid Portal, 3G Bridge, BOINC -> EGEE bridge) and hence the creation of the WWG is technically feasible.

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