Combining Grid and Cloud for e-sciences applications

Introduction

It’s well known that the developments environments used in Grid and Cloud are very different. The key differences between these two platforms are based on theoretical concepts as well as implementations. The aim of this tutorial is to propose a set of concepts and tools used to bridge these two large-scale distributed systems. Concretely speaking, we propose a set of libraries used to develop high performance applications that could be deployed on Grid and Cloud without any re-writing. The following platforms/middlewares will be used during the practical part:

• the XtremWeb-CH volunteer computing platform (XWCH: www.xtremwebch.net)
• two public cloud (IaaS): Amazon and Azure
• a private cloud IaaS based on OpenStack middleware

The tutorial is composed of theoretical and practical parts. The theoretical part will deal with the following aspects:

• Grid vs. Cloud computing,
• Overview of XWCH, Amazon, Azure and OpenStack
• How to develop applications for XWCH

During the practical part, the students will be able to deploy e-sciences applications on an heterogeneous platform based on XWCH, Azure, Amazon and OpenStack. A generic API is used for this purpose.

Important information

• For this tutorial a personal notebook is recommended.
• Java (at least 1.6) should be installed on your laptop.
• if you plan to attend this tutorial, please create an "XtremWeb-CH" account on XtremWeb-CH portal and send an Email to nabil.abdennadher@hesge.ch to validate your account.