Using a grid: An administrator’s perspective

1. Planning

The administrator should understand the organization’s requirements for the grid to better choose the grid technologies that satisfy those requirements. The following sections briefly describe the steps the administrator may take to manage the grid. It is suggested that one should start by deploying a small grid first, to learn about its installation and management, before having to confront more complicated issues involved with a large grid.

The use of a grid is often born from a need for increased resources of some type. One often looks to their neighbor who may have excess capacity in the particular resource. One of the first considerations is the hardware available and how it is connected via a LAN or WAN. Next, an organization may want to add additional hardware to augment the capabilities of the grid. It is important to understand the applications to be used on the grid. Their characteristics can affect the decisions of how to best choose and configure the hardware and its connectivity.

Security

Security is a much more important factor in planning and maintaining a grid than in conventional distributed computing, where data sharing comprises the bulk of the activity. In a grid, the member machines are configured to execute programs rather than just move data. This makes an unsecured grid potentially fertile ground for viruses and trojan horse programs. For this reason, it is important to understand exactly which components of the grid must be rigorously secured to deter any kind of attack. Furthermore, it is important to understand the issues involved in authenticating users and providing proper authorization for specific operations.

Organization

The technology considerations are important in deploying a grid. However, organizational and business issues can be equally important. It is important to understand how the departments in an organization interact, operate, and contribute to the whole. Often, there are barriers built between departments and projects to protect their resources in an effort to increase the probability of timely

success. However, by rethinking some of these relationships, one can find that more sharing of resources can sometimes benefit the entire organization. For example, a project that finds itself behind schedule and over budget may not be able to afford the resources required to solve the problem. A grid would give such projects an added measure of safety, providing an extra margin of resource capacity needed to finish the project. Similarly, a project in its early stages, when computing resources are not being fully utilized, may be able to donate them to other projects in need. A grid also offers the ability for the organization’s management to see the bigger picture and react more quickly in shifting resource utilization, priorities, and policies.