XtreemOS

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

XtreemOS is an integrated project for which the European Union has provided funding for research activities of around 14 million euros as part of the sixth framework program . The full name of the project is Building and Promoting a Linux -Based Operating System to Support Virtual Organizations for Next Generation Grids .

aims

The XtreemOS project is described in detail in the non-public contract FP6-033576 with the European Commission.

The fundamental objective is the development of a practical open source - operating system , which is capable of grid computing offer. Two elementary abstractions are used for this: virtual organizations and the XtreemOS grid.

A virtual organization (VO) in this context has a more infrastructural meaning, so that including a connection of geographically separated individuals, groups, organizational units or entire organizations for the purpose of the common use of resources, skills and information, "supported by means of EDP “Is to be understood. A central problem point is the administration of these VOs. Current grid environments require a lot of effort in this regard, because user profiles and security policies have to be set up specifically for the VO. Since XtreemOS is a complete operating system, it is possible to use both user profiles and security aspects of an administrative domain (e.g. computers from company A) also in a VO (computer from company A and computer from company B) and to enforce access policies globally so that the additional administrative effort remains minimal.

The support of VOs is pursued by the second sub-project. An existing Linux kernel is changed in such a way that it offers the necessary support and it also allows the XtreemOS grid to be set up.

The XtreemOS grid corresponds to any number of computers (grid nodes) within a VO and is responsible for storing information as well as executing applications or, viewed in a very abstract way, fulfilling services. The term computer encompasses the entire range of technical devices that are capable of executing applications and that can be connected to one another via an interface via - usually heterogeneous - networks. The computers involved are categorized into access points (all members of a VO) and resource providers (members of the grid).

In the course of the project, the first thing to do is to evaluate which services are required for a grid system in order to develop and optimize them later. In addition, these services should have a maximum degree of scalability, performance, security and fault tolerance and have a high degree of distribution transparency (non-functional properties). Since it can be assumed that these are services in a highly dynamic environment, concepts still need to be developed that can guarantee these non-functional properties. The integration of the VO and thus the grid concept into the operating system also allows very fine-grained monitoring of individual resources, which can also be used to manage the grid, for example to identify overloaded nodes.

Organization and structure

The project is divided into five so-called sub- projects, of which sub-project 2 (Linux for Virtual Organizations) and sub-project 3 (grid support in Linux) emerge as central elements.

Sub-projects are in turn divided into work packages , within which tasks exist as modularization structures. Each work package is headed by a work package leader who is responsible for the work within the work package, i.e., among other things, responsible for the communication and coordination between the individual participants and the scheduled completion of the deliverables and milestones .

The work package leaders represent the organization at the operational level. Just as the work group leaders coordinate the members of their work groups, the heads of the sub-projects take care of the coordination of the work groups and the project managers take care of the interaction of the sub-projects.

At the administrative and financial level, the project is organized by a coordinator who liaises between the XtreemOS consortium and the European Commission.

The Executive Committee is composed of the working group leader, the leader of the sub-projects, the coordinator and the project leader and is chaired by the latter. As the executive body, it is mainly responsible for realizing the scientific goals set by the board of directors. However, it also has the right to make proposals to the Board of Directors with regard to the objectives, which must be approved by it as a strategic decision-making body and highest control body. The board of directors is made up of one representative from each member, with the project manager being the chairman.

Time schedule

The timing for the XtreemOS project is divided into four phases.

In the first phase from the start of the project (June 2006) up to and including the sixth month (end of November 2006), it is primarily a matter of specifying what the support for VOs looks like and which functionality which one of the grid services fulfills. From month seven to month 18, the basic mechanisms and services are to be implemented and tested. The test scenarios provided by the industrial partners should also be completed during this time.

At the beginning of the third phase (six months), the software modules that were created during the second phase are to be integrated and combined into packages, while the last 24 months will serve to improve and expand the existing system. During this phase there will be a working release version every six months. Versions of the operating system will be released within the last year, for which support will also be offered.

Both the integration and the distribution of the public releases as well as their support will be carried out by the distributors involved in the project.

Attendees

17 university and industrial partners from all over Europe are involved in the project, as well as one industrial and one university partner from China . The following list shows the organizations involved in XtreemOS as well as their main responsible persons:

Spain
  • Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC): Jesùs Labarta, Eduard Ayguade, Toni Cortes, Xavi Martorell, Julita Corbalan
  • Telefónica Group (TID): David Artuñedo, Santiago Prieto, Alvaro Martínez
France
Italy
  • Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), as a joint research group of the Istituto di scienza e tecnologie dell'informazione "Alessandro Faedo" (ISTI-CNR), Istituto di calcolo e reti ad alte prestazioni (ICAR) and the University of Pisa and the University of Calabria : Domenico Laforenza, Marco Danelutto, Salvatore Orlando, Domenico Talia, Domenico Saccà, Marco Vanneschi
  • T6: Italy, Andrea Nicolai, Mauro Giorgetti
Great Britain
  • Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC): Alvaro Arenas, Juan Bicarregui, Keith Jeffery, Damian Mac Randal, Michael Wilson
Netherlands
China
  • Institute of Computing Technology (ICT): Zhiwei Xu, Wei Li, Haiyan Yu
  • Red Flag Software: Pengcheng Zou, Xiaolin Chang
Germany
Slovenia
  • XLAB: Gregor Pipan, Jaka Močnik, Uroš Jovanovič

literature

  • XtreemOS Consortium: Annex 1 - Description of Work . IST-033576. The European Commission, April 2006 ( irisa.fr [accessed April 21, 2014]).
  • I. Foster, C. Kesselmann (eds.): The Grid: Blueprint for a new computing infrastructure . Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco 1999.
  • I. Foster, S. Tuecke: The anatomy of the Grid: Enabling scalable virtual organizations . In: International Journal of Supercomputer Applications . 2001.
  • Pradeep Padala, Joseph N. Wilson: GridOS: Operating System Services for Grid Archichitectures . Proceedings of International Conference On High Performance Computing, 1999.
  • Klaus Krauter, Muthucumaru Maheswaran: Architecture for a Grid Operating System . Architecture for a Grid Operating System, 2000.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ European Commission: Sixth Framework Program . September 20, 2002 ( PDF; 0.6 MB )