Transcript (.ppt)

Henri Bal
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
vrije Universiteit
Our Grid Adventures on
DAS-2, GridLab and Grid'5000
• DAS-2: homogeneous Computer Science grid
+ “A grid that works’’
+ Ideal for clean measurements
- Bad for heterogeneous or long-latency experiments
• GridLab: ad-hoc testbed for one EC project
+ Useful for heterogeneous experiments
- Small-scale, unstable
• Grid’5000: large-scale French CS grid
+ Excellent for large-scale experiments
- Bad connectivity to outside world (DAS-2)
Are experimental Grid platforms useful?
 Some DAS-2 (2002-2006) statistics:
• 1 M€ investment (5 Myrinet clusters, 200 nodes)
• > 200 users from many universities, 25 Ph.D. theses
• Major incentive for VL-e (Virtual Laboratory for
e-Science) initiative  20 M€ government funding
- VL-e was major incentive for Big-Grid (~ 30 M€)
• Funding for DAS-3 (Aug. 2006)
• Collaboration DAS-3 /SURFnet: 80 Gbs optical network
• Collaboration with Grid’5000: towards a European scale
=> DAS has a major impact on Dutch computer science
What is the experimental scope?
• Essential to distinguish between:
- Experimental grids for Computer Scientists
- Proof of concept environments for application scientists
- Production grids (with massive data storage)
• In plain Dutch: DAS / VL-e PoC / Big-Grid
• Computer Science grids are needed to:
- Do clean experiments with reproducible results
- Optimize utilization degree < 20%
- Be able to change everything (OS, network protocols)
Is there room for an international testbed?
• Need large-scale systems
- E.g., for research on P2P computing, algorithms,
programming systems, communication protocols, etc.
• There are many collaborations that may
boost an international testbed
- NL: ASCI school  DAS-1, DAS-2, DAS-3
- EU: CoreGRID NoE  …..