Gateway Machines for the APAC Grid

Overview

The APACrid is interconnected using 'Gateways'.Each partner in the APAC Grid is supplied with a Gateway machine. The gateway is a common interface between the APAC Grid and an individual partner's HPC facilities. Characteristics of the Gateways include :

• The Gateways use Xen to provide virtual machines.
• Generally the gateway itself and its virtual machines run CentOS. However there are exceptions.
• A number of different Grid Software Stacks are provided, each on its own Virtual machine. For example, Globus 2.4, Globus 4, LCG
• A number of specific functions are also provided, again, each on its own Virtual machine. For example, a data staging machine and a tomcat enabled Portal machine.
• Gateways are substantially, at least from an end users point of view, uniform across the APACGrid.

Gateway Progress Report

• GatewayProgressreport

The Gateway VMs

VM	Caretaker	Details inc contents, technology and contact info
Xen Base Install	Graham Jenkins, VPAC	XenInstall
Xen Base Install (CentOS 5)	Graham Jenkins, VPAC	XenInstallTest
NG1	Graham Jenkins, VPAC	VmdetailsNg1
NG2	Graham Jenkins, VPAC	VmdetailsNg2
NGData	Joseph Antony, ANU	VmdetailsNgdata
NGDataVdt	Graham Jenkins, VPAC	VmdetailsNgdataVdt
NGPortal	Ashley Wright, QPSF	VmdetailsNgportal
MyProxy	Ashley Wright, QPSF	VmdetailsMyproxy
MDS	Daniel Cox, SAPAC	MdsVMDeployment
vomrs	Chris Kendrick, VPAC	VmdetailsVomrs
nggums	Chris Kendrick, VPAC	VmdetailsGUMS

Site Summary

Current Status and Install Guide

• Build notes: XenInstall

Features and issues that are resolved by the Gateway

• A limitation on the number of systems that need grid components installed and managed within the APAC partnership reducing overall grid management overheads.

• Grid connectivity is available for systems that are dependant on components that are not supported under our chosen grid components.

• Enhanced security as many grid protocols and associated ports only need to be open between the various gateway machines. Only the local gateway needs to interact with site systems.

• Several grid toolkits are incompatible with each other, each of these kits can run in their own virtual machines.

• Provide support for the roll-out and control of production grid configuration through the implementation of standardized grid support across all APAC partner sites

• Provide support for production and development grids and local experimentation without significant hardware investment through a virtual machine implementation where different services and different quality of services are provided on separate grid installations

• Each virtual machine can be rebooted (or even crashed) without affecting the other VMs and the remaining services. Therefore experimental development can be more easily supported.

Site Plans

Each site is required to submit a plan showing the physical and logical connections between the gateway machine and their existing infrastructure.

Gateway IP Addresses

Every site is required to keep a list of the Gateway IP Addresses they are using so that those sites with firewall restrictions can request that access to those systems be permitted.

Agreed Hardware Config

Dual xeon 2.8GHz rack mounted. Four Gig Ram and about 300Gig of hardware mirrored SCSI hard disk space. At least five GigE ports. Three years hardware on site warranty. Dual power supply. At least one free PCI slot.

The GigE ports will be allocated:

• one for management
• two for the data machine
• two for remainder of VMs

File Systems

• Some site will be able to mount user home directories on the 'incoming globus' VMs (ie ng1, ng2, nglcg). This is desirable but difficult or impossible for some particular sites. Important factors that influence this decision include the presence (or otherwise) of DMZs and single user files systems. There is no requirment within the APAC grid that user files systems be mounted on the Gateway however, it certainly has some advantages.

Here's a brief discussion on pbs logs access. PbsLogTailing

See Also these Legacy Docs

• GatewaysoftwareDecisions
• VirtualMachines
• GatewayhardwareDecisions
• XenReferences

-- GrahamJenkins - 17 Apr 2007