New Middleware Capabilities

Dear NCNers,

Over the last year and a half the middleware supporting the nanoHUB has evolved tremendously. We deployed InVIGO from University of Florida to replace the aging PUNCH middleware and put in production a reference implementation (InVIGO lite) to serve Rappture applications. We integrated Condor from University of Wisconsin to give you access to a significant amount of cycles on the "Grid". We also integrated a Purdue virtualization technology called VIOLIN to give you access to a virtual linux cluster.

You have seen the benefit through the many applications that have been deployed and that are managed behind the scenes by InVIGO lite. Several other capabilities are now available:

  • Workspaces: available to NCN students and faculty, they are a standard linux environment embedded in your browser. You can use this for development of applications and job submission. They are available as tools on the nanoHUB. To request access to a workspace fill in the form at: http://www.nanohub.org/support/report_problems/
  • login.nanohub.org: available to NCN students and faculty, this is a frontend that appears like a real linux machine but is in fact a virtual machines. You can use this instead of workspaces if you prefer.
  • Webdav: Recognizing the need to easily access your nanoHUB data and files we deployed and enhanced webdav capability that allows you to mount your nanoHUB directory on your local desktop (see http://www.nanohub.org/support/webdav/)
  • SFTP: We also deployed a standard sftp server to access your data through standard ftp protocols. Every nanoHUB user has access to it (sftp.nanohub.org).
  • Open Science Grid: the nanoHUB is now part of the Open Science Grid. This means that NCN has access to cycles all over the US (http://osg-cat.grid.iu.edu/) on an opportunistic basis. You can donate your own cycles by joining OSG yourself (as a cycle provider) and accepting jobs from the nanoHUB (also known as the nanoHUB Virtual Organization (VO) ).
  • VIOLIN cluster: This is a cluster made of virtual machines which offers very good performance. You can access this cluster through a workspace or through the "login" machine, using the standard PBS commands. For now, this cluster is best used for testing and development rather than production work.
  • Condor: By integrating Condor with our middleware we are able to give you access to TeraGrid resources and to OSG resources relatively seamlessy. This is currently still under testing but we welcome any help in working out the latest difficulties. MOCA, GAMESS and NEMO3D are our first applications to use Condor but many more can be worked on. For an introduction to Condor see: http://www.nanohub.org/resources/?id=1110

We hope that you will enjoy all these new features and that your research and education will be enhanced by it.

  • Sebastien Goasguen, Steve Clark, Rick Kennell, Dongyan Xu, Paul Ruth, Gerhard Klimeck (Purdue)
  • Renato Figueiredo, Jose Fortes, Suma Adabala (University of Florida)
  • Alain Roy, Jaime Frey (University of Wisconsin).

Sebastien Goasguen, Ph-D
Senior Research Scientist
Purdue University