Download The Globus Toolkit

The Globus Toolkit
Gary Jackson
<[email protected]>
Introduction
The Globus Toolkit is a product of the
Globus Alliance (http://www.globus.org)
 It is middleware for developing grids
 The current release is 3.2, and the 4.0
release is forthcoming

Services Provided
Infrastructure (MDS, Web services)
 Security

 (GSI,

CAS, etc.)
Data Grid
 (GridFTP,

RFT, RLS)
Computational Grid
 (GRAM)
Services Provided:
Infrastructure

Web-services based infrastructure
 At
a low level, grid services are web
services
 Additionally, statefulness added with the
Web Services: Resource Framework
(WSRF) in the Globus Toolkit 4.0 (GT4)

Monitoring and Discovery System
(MDS)
 For
finding resources in a grid
Services Provided: Security

Grid Security Infrastructure (GSI) for
authentication
 X.509
with proxy certificates (RFC3820)
Web-service interfaces for authentication
and authorization
 Community Authorization Service

 Web-services
based authorization service
Services Provided:
Data Grid

GridFTP
 Efficient,
non-web-service based
protocol for data transfer

Replica Location Service (RLS)
 Efficient
distributed service for
enumerating the locations of file replicas

Reliable File Transfer (RFT)
 Service
for reliably managing file
transfers
Services Provided:
Computational Grids

Grid Resource Allocation Manager
 Resource

identification and job execution
From other parties
 Condor-G
 Community
Scheduler Framework
Implemented Standards and
Protocols
GSI (RFC3820) for secure authentication
 W3C draft standards for web services
(WS: Resource Framework, WS:
Addressing, etc.)

Metadata
No direct support with the distribution
 We’ve used the Metadata Catalog Service
(MCS) before to manage metadata in a
data grid

Maturity
The Globus Toolkit has been around for
many years
 However, the transition to web services
has been rocky: GT3 is based on
extensions to web services that were not
widely accepted
 This should stabilize with the release of
GT4

Support

From the Globus Alliance and the Globus
community
 Manuals
 Mailing
lists
 Good tutorial on development from Borja
Sotomayor
(http://www.casa-sotomayor.net/gt3-tutorial/)
Support

Commercial Support from Platform
Computing (http://www.platform.com)
 Supported
distribution of GT3
 Enhanced support for job scheduling on a grid
(for computational grids)
Globus Licensing
Globus is covered under the Globus
Toolkit Public License (GTPL 2)
 This is a very open license that allows
modification and redistribution in source
or binary form for any party, with some
stipulations about further licensing and
advertisement
 It also extends patent licensing

Future Plans
There have been several GT4 alpha
releases, including one scheduled for
January 31st
 The GT4 beta is due on March of this year
 The GT4 final release is due in April of
this year
