Design of a commercial service based on Grid technologies

Eduardo Jacob, Juan José Unzilla, María Victoria Higuero, Purificación Saiz

<jtpjatae@bi.ehu.es>

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Agenda

• The approach.• (Our?) Concept of a GRID.• The question.• The answer.• A service and a model for

commercialization• Project status.• Conclusions.

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The past

• Sometime ago we were asked to study ASP (Application Service Provider) phenomena by a major local ISP.

• Concept– Remote execution of applications.

• Advantages (expected…)– Reduction of acquisition and maintenance costs.– High availability.– Protection from virus and security incidents.– …

• Disadvantages– Connectivity becomes critical.– ¿Cost?

• The reality– It hasn’t had much success.

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Problems with ASP

• For the Provider– It is a totally new activity.– The business model is not clear.– Relations with a software provider.– It’s not a “well-known” activity.

• For the Client:– It’s a vinculation with another partner.– Software pirating is (still…) an option.

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Our experiences

• 2 Research Projects (Dpt. of Industry of the Basque Government)

• Conclusions– Small and Medium ISP didn’t adopt the Application Service

Provider model.• They bet on other services

– Related to connectivity (their main area of experience):» Remote backup*» Virtual Disk*

– Additional services» EDI-XML Invoicing» PKI for non personal end entities.

– The clients with unused nightly connectivity, would like to benefit from it..

• Remote backup is appealing.• They worry about confidentiality and availability.

*More succesful

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Later…

• The GRID appears– Architecture to share systematically and a big

scale CPU, HD storage, SGBD, services, etc.– With AAA advanced concepts.– With standardized definition of services.– With an implementation of reference: Globus

Toolkit.– OGSA (Open Grid Services Architecture)

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The GRID

• “Successor” of technologies like:– Concurrent programming:

• PVM, MPI: Message passing.• OpenMP: Shared memory.

– Remote File Systems• NFS.• SMB.• WebDAV.

– Successful massive experiments like Seti@Home

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The GRID

• Contemporary of other technologies– Condor

• Exploits idle CPUs • Condor-G: designed to coexist Globus.

– BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing )

• Architecture that will support Seti@Home.– Technologies like:

• DCOM, .net• Corba…

– P2P Systems• Final User: Emule, Kazaa, Freenet, Bittorrent• Development platforms: JXTA, Green Tea…

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What is the GRID anyway?

Probably, most features of previous …• Distributed systems.

– Heterogeneous.– Dedicated or not.– General purpose or not.– Personal or corporate use .– For getting better overall CPU performance, HD storage,

services, connectivity through cooperative sharing.

• Collaborative Schemas– All parts are involved.– All parts are (almost) equals.

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The question they did us

• Is there a possibility to develop a paradigm for the marketing of commercial services based in GRID technologies?

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The answer

• We are searching……but we may have found one.

• Research Project, promoted by private company (ISP provider) and co funded by University of the Basque Country.– “Definition of models for provision of GRID technology

based services ” (2003-2004)• Objectives

– Search candidate services.– Search models for commercialization.– Design a pilot.

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The perfect Business Model?

• ISP offering GRID services with his own infrastructure.

– Direct application of GRID concept.– Natural activity for ISP.

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Conclusions of analysis

• Good points– Adequate for a Research Network provider.– Clear Invoicing and QoS parameters: HD storage, bandwidth

allocation, CPU use…

• Bad points– For generic (Non-GRID) applications, integration clients are

needed.– For GRID applications you need VERY GOOD connectivity…– There is a very little (not?) market of (commercial?) application

that could benefit from commercial offer

We need to change the approach!!

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A new approach

• Could we profit from our previous experience with ASP?– Service with some possibilities:

• Remote storage:– Remote backup.– Virtual Disk (random access)

– Some aspects to bear in mind:• Client connectivity periodically wasted (Night periods in flat

rates links).• It should be an attractive offer.• But users fear of confidentiality and secrecy of data.• There should be a clear invoicing criteria (or, as seen from

the other side a SLA)• The ISP is the promoter, and should be included in the

solution!!!.

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The service

• Durable Storage– Data existence assured even with wide area

disasters.– Replication of data.

• Over different geographical areas.• Using different providers.• Using opaque data.• With a unique interface to clients.

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Foundations

• Technical approach: Is it a P2P application?– Direct use of P2P technologies?

• We don’t think– Uncontrolled replication of data between sites.– Unmanaged system (mostly)– The ISP figure is not necessary…– Many participants… suitable only for an entity with

many premises (responsibility, anonymity, confidentiality, use of the resources involved)

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Durable Storage Architecure

• Evolution of P2P model• 2 kinds of clients

– Users/Providers of durable storage.– Users-only of durable storage.

• User/providers– Store not only own data.– Can purchase or exchange resources

• The ISP– Provides Directory Services

• Selects replication location according to the SLA– Size– Number of replicas– Geographical localization (i.e.: different continents)– Bandwidth

• Locates files for retrieval• Manages site regeneration

– Acts as clearing house for clients and as only invoicing point.– Assures the Level of Service

• By controlling the whole system • Providing transient resources (Storage, CPU).

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Durable Storage

• Advantages– Client:

• Can stand total collapse of own system.• Architecture potentially resistant to wide area

disasters (through the use of distant geographical areas).

• Needs only one contract.• Can reduce costs by participating with

resources.– ISP

• Has a clear situation.• Drawbacks

– ISP• Has to manage user and server

authentication and privacy data.• Some complexity for resource selection.

– Clients• In spite of privacy and anonymity measures

there could be some reluctance to the use of the service.

ISP

Client Systems

Redundancy

Client Data

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Project Status

• Functional requirements • Service architecture

– Modified Bit-Torrent-like

• Security architecture – SSL + secret key crypto.

• Protocol design• Coding prototype (trials at the end of the year)• Later

– External API (for integration)• Adhoc?• Web Services.?• OGSA Compatibility?

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Architecture

Control ServerSystem Architecture

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Conclusions

• It could possible to offer GRID services commercially through a central third party.

• The service offers possibilities for different Service Levels: Commercialization options.

• It is possible to offer services to small/medium users.

• ISP doesn’t need new skills.• In a collaborative way, involved clients have

operational (always) and economical (if they participate sharing resources) benefits.

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Thank you

Any questions?