Introduction

GRIA allows service providers to easily integrate legacy computing, cluster facilities, applications and new bespoke services within a procurement and billing process. GRIA separates service management from service usage through a well-defined interface allowing a diverse set of applications to be supported and managed. The service management capabilities are typically used by decision makers with responsibilities for finanicial accounts and setting up business relationships. The application services are used by employees involved within a businesses core operation such as design engineers, scientists, financial traders, film animators and editors.

GRIA includes a basic application services package that allows an organisation with cluster computing facilities to provide data storage and processing (using applications installed on the cluster) for trusted users. Other application services can be developed, and some are available as 'add on' packages from the GRIA website.

Easily Integrate Your Legacy Applications as Grid Services

The GRIA basic application services package allows service providers to easily deploy legacy applications as managed Grid services. Applications must run in batch mode, and are executed either locally or on a separate execution platform, which may be a cluster controlled by a resource manger. GRIA provides two services, as follows.

• A Data Service: this allows remote users to upload and download data files to the service provider, and to transfer data between Data Services hosted by different service providers. The Data Service also supports management of access rights (for read or read-write access) granted to other users or service providers.

• A Job Service: this allows remote users to start, monitor or kill computational jobs, executed by the service provider. The Job Service will fetch input from and write output to a local Data Service. The Job Service can be configured to support multiple applications, which are chosen by the service provider.

Service providers integrate applications into the Job Service using wrapper scripts. These provide a consistent abstraction between GRIA and the underlying application. Application wrappers can be simple shell scripts that unzip input files, invoke the legacy application and zip application-generated output files for writing to output data services. Application wrappers become more complex when context mapping on input data is required; in these cases other programs or script modules, e.g. Perl modules, can be invoked to provide the necessary functionality.

Connect Your Cluster Using Your Preferred Resource Manager

GRIA allows service providers to run applications on different execution platforms, including local execution and computational clusters, using a wide range of different resource managers depending upon the business need. 

GRIA's Job Service uses a consistent execution platform model that can be implemented for an arbitrary platform by writing resource management scripts to handle interactions between the job service and the provider's preferred cluster manager or job submission system.  These scripts provide functionality to start, monitor status, and terminate jobs. GRIA is distributed with default scripts for local execution on the machine hosting the job service, and working examples for PBS and Condor.

Develop Your Own Managed Services

The GRIA Service Management package and Client framework package are designed to allow other application services to be managed via a simple and well-defined set of management interfaces. Some application services that have been coupled to GRIA in this way will shortly available through the GRIA website, including support for database intergration via OGSA-DAI, and workflow enactment by consumers on the desktop (using Taverna), or through a separate application service (using FreeFluo).