CSE-Online

From PRAGMAgridWIKI

Revision as of 02:12, 11 February 2007; view current revision
←Older revision | Newer revision→

1 Computational Science and Engineering Online on PRAGMA Clusters

Computational Science and Engineering Online on PRAGMA Clusters

Computational Science and Engineering Online (CSE-Online)is a virtual desktop environment running on the user desktop/laptop computers that can access data, application tools, and computing resources on their local computers, remote servers as well as the computing grid.

Particularly interesting to the PRAGMA community is the Grid Submission (GSub) tool within CSE-Online environment. GSub enables the users to submit jobs directly to the Grid nodes from the CSE-Online environment without the need of a web portal. Furthermore, it allows the user to configure to run any application on the grid node providing that the user has the proper Certificate of Authority.

Demontration on how CSE-Online running GAMESS on SDSC PRAGMA cluster (Rock52)

This demonstration is a movie capture of the actual event for the first-time user who required to configure the Grid Submission (GSub) tool before using it. Subsequent use of GSub only requires to enter the passphase. Click Here to see the demo movie.

There are a number of other applications available within the CSE-Online environment. Click Here for more information.

[edit]

How to support CSE-Online running applications such as GAMESS on your testbed cluster

CSE-Online has the client-server architecture and thus some setup is needed on both sides.

On the server side

1. Upgrade to GT4 WS preferably so GSub can get the job status.

2. Install GAMESS on your cluster. It is possible using Gfarm to propragate the executable to all clusters.

On the client side

The next several steps are done within the CSE-Online environment, thus thus you need to install CSE-Online on your desktop. The first two steps are for using GSub to setup the proxy and CA for your server.

1. Move the userkey.pem and usercert.pem files to your desktop and store them in the new folder called C:\Documents and Settings\'User Name'\.globus.

2. Initiate GSub and follow the instruction for setting up your proxy certificate _x509.

3. Configuring GSub to recognize your cluster then export this config file which is in XML format. Make this config file available to all users of your cluster. They can just import the config file and does not have to do any configuration again. Here is the server configuration file for Rock52. (Rock52-config) (To save the file, right click and select 'Save Link as') Other users on Rock52 needs this file.

4. Write an application configuration file, namely the script, to run GAMESS on your cluster using GSub then export it. Make this application config file available to other users of your cluster. Again they can jsut import the file and does not have to repeat the task. If you need help with this step, please contact us. Here is the exported application config file for GAMESS on Rock52.(GAMESS-Rock52) (To save the file, right click and select 'Save Link as') Other users on Rock52 need this file.

More information is available Here.

Once done, all users on your cluster need to configure GSub to setup the proxy certificate_x509 (Steps 1 and 2 of the client side) and then import both the server and application config files. CSE-Online is then ready to access your cluster using the Globus technology.

That is it!

Once you have done for GAMESS, getting CSE-Online to run AMBER and Gaussian03 applications on your clusters is easy. Just repeat the steps above.

[edit]

How to make an application Grid enabled within CSE-Online

For applications that are not yet supported in CSE-Online, we will show you how to make it Grid enabled within CSE-Online. We are working on the programming manual and Eclipse plugins, etc. to facilitate this process. Here is the demo.

Description of the demo: This demo illustrates the possibility for making your software application Grid enabled within the CSE-Online environmet while being able to maintain it on your server. The demo using the Sander GUI (Sander is the MD module of the AMBER package) for illustration. This demo has two parts.

The first part shows the standalone Sander GUI located at the Amber.Utah web site. Users can launch this application on his desktop computer using Java Webstart. This application allows the user to create input for the Sander module and save the file on his local computer. However, it cannot run the Sander application on any computer.

The second part shows how Sander GUI can access/save files on remote servers and run the Sander program on the TeraGrid by interfacing with the Global File Explorer to accessing files on local and remote computers and the GSub tool for submission to the computing grid such as the TeraGrid within the CSE-Online environment. It does not require significant efforts to add such functionalities into the above standalone version. The tasks can be completed by a non-CSE-Onlin programmer in one or two days including testing. Note that the CSE-Online enabled Sander GUI executable is located at the Amber.Utah web site. This means the developer of the Sander GUI can continue to develop and maintain the application independently. CSE-Online is able to load the program on demand from information given in the descriptor file (in XML format) located at that web site. The demo captures the actual event of the first-time user of the Sander GUI and GSub tools. For first time usage of the GSub tool, it requires the user to configure the Grid and available applications on the grid node. It loads an existing application config file. Subsequent use of Gsub only requires the user to enter the passphase upon getting the Grid proxy.

Click Here to see the demo movie.

[edit]