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CS2063 GRID COMPUTING


TWO MARK QUESTION & ANSWERS

1. What is Grid Computing?

Grid computing is the concept of distributed computing technologies for
computing resource sharing among participants in a virtualized collection of organization.

2. What is QOS?

Grid computing system is the ability to provide the quality of service
requirements necessary for the end-user community.

QOS provided by the grid like performance, availability, management aspects,
business value and flexibility in pricing.

3. What are the derivatives of grid computing?
There are 8 derivatives of grid computing. They are as follows:
a) Compute grid
b) Data grid
c) Science grid
d) Access grid
e) Knowledge grid
f) Cluster grid
g) Terra grid
h) Commodity grid

4. What are the features of data grids?

The ability to integrate multiple distributed, heterogeneous and
independently managed data sources.
The ability to provide data catching and/or replication mechanisms to
minimize network traffic.
The ability to provide necessary data discovery mechanisms, which allow
the user to find data based on characteristics of the data.

5. What are the features of computational grids?

The ability to allow for independent management of computing resources
Failure detection and failover mechanisms

6. What is virtual organization?

Virtual organization is nothing but coordinating resource sharing and problem
sharing and dynamic multi institution organization.

7. What is business on demand?

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Business On Demand is not just about utility computing as it has a much broader
set of ideas about the transformation of business practices, process transformation, and
technology implementations.

The essential characteristics of on-demand businesses are responsiveness to the
dynamics of business, adapting to variable cost structures, focusing on core business
competency, and resiliency for consistent availability.

8. What are the facilities provided by virtual organization?

The formation of virtual task forces, or groups, to solve specific problems
associated with the virtual organization.
The dynamic provisioning and management capabilities of the resource
required meeting the SLAs.

9. What is the definition of grid computing concept given by Foster?

A computational grid is a combination of hardware and software infrastructure that
provides dependable, consistent, pervasive, and inexpensive access to high end-user
computational capabilities.

10. What are the business benefits in grid computing?

Acceleration of implementation time frames in order to intersect with the anticipated
business end results.
Robust and infinitely flexible and resilient operational infrastructures.
Avoiding common pitfalls of over provisioning and incurring excess costs.

11. What are the examples of major business areas in grid computing?

Life sciences for analyzing and decoding strings of biological and chemical
information.
Financial services for running long, complex financial models and arriving at
more accurate decisions.
Higher education for enabling advanced, data and computation intensive research.

12. What are the grid computing applications?

Application partitioning that involves breaking the problem into discrete pieces.
Discovery and scheduling of tasks and workflow.
Data communications distributing the problem data where and when it is required.

13. What is meant by scheduler?

Schedulers are types of applications responsible for the management of jobs, such
as allocating resources needed for any specific job, partitioning of jobs to schedule parallel
execution of tasks, data management, event correlation, and service-level management
capabilities.

14. What is meant by resource broker?
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Resource broker provides pairing services between the service requester and the
service provider. This pairing enables the selection of best available resources from the
service provider for the execution of a specific task.

15. What is load balancing?

Load balancing is concerned with the integrating the system in order to avoid
processing delays and over-commitment of resources. It involves partitioning of jobs,
identifying the resources and queuing the jobs.

16. What are grid portals? Give example.

Grid portals are similar to web portals, in the sense they provide uniform access to
grid resources.
Eg: Grid portals provide capabilities for the GC resource authentication, remote resource
access, scheduling capabilities and monitoring status information.

17. What is grid infrastructure?

Grid infrastructure forms the core foundation for successful grid applications.
This infrastructure is a complex combination of number of capabilities and resources
identified for the specific problem and environment being addressed.

18. Give the example of software application ASP.
Weather Predication
Math Modeling Application

19. Give the examples of Hardware service provider.
Computer Cluster
Computer System
Linux on Demand
Network Bandwidth
Blades

20. Write the any three Grid Applications.
Schedulers
Resource Broker
Load Balancing


UNIT - II

1. Name the classification of GC organization based on their Functional role.
Organizations developing grid standards and best practices guidelines.
Organizations developing GC toolkits, frameworks and middleware solutions.
Organizations building and using grid based solutions to solve their computing, data
and network requirements.
Organizations working to adopt grid concepts into commercial products.
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2. What are the basic goals of GGF?
Create an open process for the development of the grid agreements and specifications.
Create grid specifications, architecture documents and best practice guidelines.
Manage and version controls the documents and specifications.
Handle intellectual property policies.
Provide a forum for information exchange and collaboration.
Improve collaboration among the people involved in the grid research, grid
deployment and grid users.
Create best practice guidelines from the experience of the technologies associated
with GC.
Educate on advances in the grid technologies and share experiences among the people
of interest.

3. What are the major works of GGF?
Application and programming environments
Data
Architecture
Information system and performance
Peer to peer: desktop grids
Scheduling and resource management
Security

4. What are the high level services including in existing globus tool kit?

GRAM (Globus Resource Allocation Manager)
GSI (Grid Security Infrastructure)
Information services.

5. Mention the important characteristic of legion system

Everything is an object
Classes manage their own instance, users can provide their own classes.

6. What are the core objects defined by legion system?

Host objects: Abstractions of processing resources which may represent a single
processor or multi host and processors.
Value objects: Provide persistent storage for scalable persistence of the objects.
Binding objects: Maps the object IDs to the physical addresses
Implementation objects: Allow objects to run as processes.

7. Name the components available in Nimrod architecture?

Nimrod-G clients: This can provide tools for creating parameter sweep applications,
steering and control monitors, and customized end-user applications and GUIs.
Nimrod-G resource broker: it consists of a Task Farming Engine (TFE), a scheduler
that performs resource discovery, trading and scheduling features, a dispatcher and actuator,
and agents for managing the jobs on the resource.

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8. What are the scheduling algorithms used in Nimrod G?
Cost optimization- uses the cheapest resource.
Time optimization- results in parallel execution of the job.
Cost-time optimization-similar to cost optimization but if there are multiple jobs with
the same cost, then the time factor is taken into consideration.
Conservative time strategy- similar to time optimization, but guarantees that each
unprocessed job has a minimum budget per job.

9. What are the major objectives of Euro grid project?
To establish a European GRID network of leading high performance computing
centers from different European countries.
To operate and support the EUROGRID software infrastructure.
To develop important GRID software components and to integrate them into
EUROGRID
To demonstrate distributed simulated codes from different application areas
To contribute to the international GRID development and work with the leading
international GRID projects.

10. What is the application specific work packages identified for the Euro grid?
Bio-Grid
Metro Grid
Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) Grid
High performance center (HPC) research Grid.

11. Define dynamic accounting system.
DAS provides the following enhanced categories of accounting functionality to the
IPG community:

Allows a grid user to request access to a local resource via the presentation of grid
credentials
Determines and grants the appropriate authorizations for a user to access a local
resource without requiring a preexisting account on the resource to govern local
authorizations.
Provides resource pricing information on the grid.

12. Mention the characteristic of connectivity layer?
Single sign-on
Delegation
Integration with local resource specific security solutions
User- based trust relationships
Data security

13. What are the two primary classes of resource layer protocols?

The resource protocols are the key to operations and integrity of any single resource.
These protocols are as follows:

i) information protocols
ii) management protocols

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14. What are the collective services available in grid computing?
Discovery services
Co allocation, scheduling, and brokering services
Monitoring and diagnostic services
Data replication services
Grid-enabled programming systems
Software discovery services

15. What are the basic principles of autonomous computing?

Self-configuring (able to adapt to the changes in the system)
Self-optimizing (able to improve performance)
Self-healing (able to recover from mistakes)
]Self-protecting (able to anticipate and cure intrusions)

16. What are the four essential characteristics of on demand business?

Responsive: Business On Demand has to be responsive to dynamic, unpredictable
changes in demand, supply, pricing, labor, and competition.
Variable: Business on Demand has to be flexible in adapting to variable cost structure
and processes associated with productivity, capital, and finance.
Focused: Business On Demand has to focus on their core competency, its
differentiating tasks and assets along with closer integration with its partners.
Resilient: A Business On Demand company has to be capable of managing changes
and competitive threats with consistent availability and security.

17. What are the essential capabilities provided by on demand business?

Integrate
Virtualization
Automation
Open standards

18. What are the two most important technologies for building semantic webs?

XML
Resource Description Framework(RDF)

19. Define Peer to Peer computing?

Peer to Peer computing is a relatively new computing discipline in the realm
of distributed computing.
P2P system defines collaboration among a larger number of individuals and/or
organizations, with a limited set of security requirements and a less complex
resource-sharing topology.
Both P2P and distributed computing are focused on resource sharing.
20. Write the combination of Globus GT3 toolkit?

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GT3 core.
Base services
User- defined services.

21. What is a GT3 core?

It provides a framework to host the high-level services.
The core consists of OGSI reference implementation, security infrastructure,
and System level services.

UNIT - III

1. What are the two commonly understood SOA architecture?

The two commonly understood SOA architecture are web and web services.

2. Define SOA.

A service-oriented architecture is intended to define loosely coupled and
interoperable services/applications, and to define a process for integrating these interoperable
components.

3. Define web service agents.
Providing open standards-based designs for interoperable messaging across
Multiple vendors.

4. What are the fundamental components of SOAP specification?

An envelope that defines a framework for describing message structure
A set of encoding rules for expressing instances of application-defined data types
A convention for representing remote procedure calls and responses
A set of rules for using SOAP with HTTP
Message exchange patterns(MEP) such as request-response, one way, and peer-to-
peer conversations

5. What are the features of SOAP?

A unique name used to identify the feature and its properties. This enables us
to identify whether a SOAP node supports a specific feature.
A set of properties associated with the feature that can be used to control,
constrain, or identify a feature.

6. What are the mechanisms available to implement the features of SOAP?

SOAP header blocks
SOAP binding protocol

7. Write notes on Message exchange pattern.
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One special type of SOAP feature is the MEP. A SOAP MEP is a template that
establishes a pattern for the exchange of messages between SOAP nodes. Some examples of
MEPs include request/response, one-way, peer-to-peer conversation, and so on.

8. What is the vision behind global XML ARCHITECTURE?

Providing standards-based and interoperable protocol definitions
Reducing development efforts by separating infrastructure protocols from
applications and transport protocols
Providing open standards-based designs for interoperable messaging across
multiple vendors.

9.What are the components available in service model?

Policy expression
Policy subject
Policy assertion
Policy attachment

10. Write notes on WS-Trust

The WS-Trust deals with different aspects of secure token services, including
how to request a token and issuing of token in a trusted manner. This issuance of tokens must
be secure and built on top of WS-Security. The secure token services can be a contact point
for secure negotiation through delegation and impersonation.

11. Write notes on WS Federation

WS-Federation defines mechanisms that are used to enable identity, attribute,
authentication, and authorization federation across different trust environments.

12. What are the classifications of service state management?

The classifications of service state management are
i) interaction aware state
ii) application aware state
13. Name some representational use cases from OGSA architecture working group?

Commercial Data Center (Commercial grid)
National Fusion Collaboratory (Science grid)
Online Media and Entertainment (Commercial grid)

14. Who are the actors in CDC?

Grid Administrator
IT system integrator
IT business activity
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15. Mention the scenarios in CDC?

Multiple in-house systems support within the enterprise.
Time-constrained commercial campaign.
Disaster recovery
Global load balancing

16. What are the functional requirements of CDC on OGSA?

Discovery of the available resources.
Scheduling of resources for specific tasks.
Provisioning of resources based on need.
Use static and dynamic policies.

17. What are the expression evaluators supported in GT3?

Service Data Name Evaluator.
Service Data Name Set Evaluator.
Service Data Name Delete Evaluator.
Service Data XPath Evaluator.

18. What are the major goals of OGSA?

Identify the use cases that can drive the OGSA platform components.
Identify and define the core OGSA platform components.
Define hosting and platform specific bindings.
Define resource models and resource profiles with interoperable solutions.

19. What are the more specific goals of OGSA?

Facilitating distributed resource management across heterogeneous platforms
Providing seamless quantity of service delivery.
Providing common infrastructure building blocks to avoid Stove pipe solutions
towers.
Open and published interfaces and messages.

20. What are the main purposes of use case defined by OGSA?

To identify and define core OGSA platform functionalities.
To define core platform components based on the functionality requirements.
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To define the high level requirements on those core components and identify their
interrelationship.

21. Name some representational use cases from OGSA architecture working group?

Commercial Data Center (Commercial grid)
National Fusion Collaboratory (Science grid)
Online Media and Entertainment (Commercial grid)

22. Who are the actors in CDC?

Grid Administrator
IT system integrator
IT business activity

23. Mention the scenarios in CDC?

Multiple in-house systems support within the enterprise.
Time-constrained commercial campaign.
Disaster recovery
Global load balancing

24. What are the functional requirements of CDC on OGSA?

Discovery of the available resources.
Scheduling of resources for specific tasks.
Provisioning of resources based on need.
Use static and dynamic policies.

25. Who are the actors in NFC?

Scientists
They are the customers of the fusion code provided by the fusion service provider.

26. Mention the scenarios in NFC?

A remote client can run code on a remote site within a time frame.
A monitoring agent starts and watches the submitted job for service-level
agreement (SLA) validation.
Integrate with external applications and resources for data and/or code execution
and flexible delegation of rights.

27. What are the functional requirements of NFC on OGSA?
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Discovery of available resources.
Workflow management for job distribution across resources.
Scheduling of service tasks.
Load balancing to manage workloads.
Network transport management.

28. Who are the actors in Online Media and Environment?

A customer who consumes the entertainment content.
A service provider who hosts the entertainment content.
A publisher who offers the entertainment content.
A developer who consumes the entertainment content.



29. Mention the scenarios in Online Media and Environment?

A consumer, for example a game player, accesses the game portal and
authenticates with the game server and starts the game.
There are several providers that are working in concert to provide the required
service for the consumer.
The content provider or media studio provides the content for the customer
experience.

30. What are the functional requirements of Online Media and Environment?

Discovering the resources.
Instantiating new service.
Monitoring resource usage and availability.
Servicing lifecycle and change management.

31. What are the layers available in OGSA architectural organizations?

Native platform services and transport mechanisms.
OGSA hosting environment.
OGSA transport and security.
OGSA infrastructure (OGSI).
OGSA basic services (meta-OS and domain services)

32. What are the OGSA basic services?

Common Management Model (CMM)
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Service domains
Distributed data access and replication.
Policy, security
Provisioning and resource management.

33. What are the two dimensions of stateful nature of web service?

A service is maintaining its state information.
The interaction pattern between the client and service can be stateful.

UNIT - V

34. What are the two aspects involved in GRAM?
Job submission- a user starts the job scheduling with the creation of a
managed job service.
Resource management a client knows about the master host environment
and the master managed factory service.

35. What are the two kinds of lifecycle model associated with state data recovery?

Persistent lifecycle model.
Transient lifecycle model.

36. Write the combination of Globus GT3 toolkit?

GT3 core.
Base services
User- defined services.

37. What is a GT3 core?

It provides a framework to host the high-level services.
The core consists of OGSI reference implementation, security infrastructure,
and System level services.

38. What are the major components of default server side framework?

Web service engine provided by Apache AXIS framework. The GT3 software
uses the Apache AXIS framework to deal with normal web services.
Globus container framework. The GT3 software provides a container to
manage stateful web service through a unique instance handle, instance
repository, and lifecycle management.

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39. Write notes on Grid container?

The Globus container model is derived from the J2EE managed container
model, where the components are free from complex resource manageability.
Lightweight service introspection and discovery.
Dynamic deployment and soft-state management of stateful grid services.

40. What are the two levels of security available in GT3?

Transport-level security-based on GSI security mechanism.
Message-level security-implemented at the SOAP message level.

41. What are the treatments to the operation involved in service activation?

Activate utilizing the lazy creation mechanism.
Activation on service startup.

42. What are the problems with the operation providers?

Due to the unavailability of multiple inheritances in java, service developers
utilize the default interface hierarchy, as provided by the framework.
Some of the behaviors implemented by the aforementioned classes are specific
to the GT3 container.
Dynamic configurations of service behaviors are not possible.

43. What are the expression evaluators supported in GT3?

Service Data Name Evaluator.
Service Data Name Set Evaluator.
Service Data Name Delete Evaluator.
Service Data XPath Evaluator.

44. What are the two different message-level authentication mechanisms provided by
GT3 framework?

GSI Secure Conversation- a secure context is established between the client
and the service.
GSI XML Signature- a message is signed with a given set of credentials.

45. What are the three ways available to create and add service data to service dataset?

Gets the service data wrapper class from the service data set using the QName
of the service data element as defined in WSDL.
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Create the value for that service data element.
Update the service data set with service data wrapper and the new value.

46. What are the steps involved in creating SDE?

Create a new SDE by calling the create method of the service instances
service data set with a unique name or QName.
Set a value for the SDE. The value of the SDE of type My Service Data type.
Set the initial value of My Service Data Type.
Add the SDE to the service data set.

47. What are the most common GT3 security handlers?

Authentication Service Handler
WS security Handler
Security Policy Handler
Authorization Handler
X509sign Handler
GSS Handler

48. What are the client side security handlers?

X509SignHandler
SecContextHandler
GSSHandler
WSSecurityClientHandler

49. What are the requirements to be fulfilled for information service in the context of
GT3?

A basis for configuration and adaptation in heterogeneous environments.
Uniform and flexible access to static and dynamic information.
Scalable and efficient access to data.
Access to multiple information sources.
Decentralized maintenance capabilities.

50. Define Peer to Peer computing?

Peer to Peer computing is a relatively new computing discipline in the realm
of distributed computing.
P2P system defines collaboration among a larger number of individuals and/or
organizations, with a limited set of security requirements and a less complex
resource-sharing topology.
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Both P2P and distributed computing are focused on resource sharing.