AHE GENIUS
From RealityGrid
The AHE is a lightweight hosting environment for running unmodified applications - NAMD, LB3D, LAMMPS, DL_POLY among others, on grid resources like the NGS and TeraGrid. For further details on the AHE see the RealityGrid AHE page.
The AHE will be used within the GENIUS project as a launching mechanism for HemeLB simulations, including cross-site MPI-g runs, providing a simple client tool to run complex multi-site jobs, and hiding details of the underlying grid infrastructure from the end user. To make such cross site runs possible, several modifications need to be made to the AHE, detailed below:
Task 1: Extending the AHE client to make HARC reservations
The AHE GUI client will be extended (with a calendar window) to allow user to make reservations on machines using HARC. The HARC Java API will be used to do this, with a view to bundling the HARC command line client tools with the AHE GUI and CLI clients.
Task 2: Modifying AHE's internal state representation to support multi-component applications The AHE's WS-ResourceProperties will be modified to support applications made up of subjobs, such as steered applications (where a binary and steering service need to be started together) and MPI-g applications (where multiple binaries need to be launched together). The RPs will also store details of HARC reservations. The AHE will make use of XSLT transforms to convert the WS-ResourceProperties document to JSDL.
Task 3: Modifying AHE's JSDL client architecture to support different types of submission service Currently the AHE acts as a client to GridSAM. The AHE will be extended so that is can also act as a client to Globus GRAM and MultiJob services. Ideally this client interface to GRAM will be used to send JSDL job descriptions generated by the AHE to JSDL compatible Globus services, but for the sake of backwards compatibility (to make use of machines that don't have the latest version of GRAM deployed) the AHE will also do an XSLT transform to convert the WS-ResourceProperties document to a JDD document.
Task 4: Extending AHE to submit MPI-g applications The AHE will server will be modified to submit appropriate job descriptions to a Globus MultiJob service to launch MPI-g jobs. The AHE GUI and command line clients will also be extended to support the launch and monitoring of MPI-g jobs.
Task 5: Extending AHE to launch ReG steered applications The AHE server will be modified to launch ReG steering web services in addition to applications. The AHE GUI and command line clients will also be extended to support the launch and monitoring of steered applications, and also to launch appropriate steering and viz clients.
[edit] Current Status
- Task 1 - Completed
The AHE client has been augmented with a GUI panel to make HARC reservations (using the HARC API). Users can use the GUI client to make, view and delete reservations.
Reservations are persisted via a file in the client config directory; eventually we hope the client will be able to query HARC for a list of active reservations, a function that will be present in a future version of HARC.
The AHE job submission wizard has been extended, so that a user can either choose the resources they want to submit to, or choose a reservation that they have previously made to submit to.
Task 2 will focus on the extension of AHE server to allow reservation IDs to be passed through to jobs when they are submitted.
Screenshots of the client GUI interface are shown to the right.
- Task 2 - Completed
The AHE server's internal state representation has been extended to cover multi-component applications: MPIg jobs and steerable simulations.
- Task 3 - Completed
The AHE server has been extended to submit jobs directly to Globus GRAM in addition to GridSAM. An XSLT transform is applied to an application instance's WS-ResourceProperties document to generate a JDD job description.
- Task 4 - Completed
Both AHE server and client have been modified to support the submission of cross-site MPIg jobs. MPIg jobs are submitted in to pre-reserved HARC allocations.
- Task 5 - Completed
AHE server has been updated to automatically launch ReG SWS when a steerable application in launched. The AHE client has also been extended to allow the user to launch a Java version of the ReG steering client from the AHE GUI, while a steerable application is running.
A diagram showing the modified AHE architecture, with the AHE server interacting directly with the Globus GRAM, can be found here.
The changes will be incorporated in to a future public release of the AHE server and client.
