Easy management and user interconnection across Grid sites

Abstract

Distributed computing systems are undoubtedly a powerful resource,providing functions that no other system can do. However, their inherent complexity can lead many users and institutions not to consider these systems when faced by challenges posed by the deployment and administration tasks. The first solution for this problem is the European Grid Initiative (EGI) roll, a tool that simplifies and streamlines those tasks, by extending the tools that are currently available for cluster administration to the grid. It allows the infrastructure to be easily scaled and adopted by the institutions that are involved in grid projects such as EGI. The second part of this work consists of a platform that enables the interconnection of computing assets from multiple sources to create a unified pool of resources. It addresses the challenge of building a global computing infrastructure by providing a communication overlay able to deal with the existence of computing facilities located behind NAT devices. The integration of these two tools results in a solution that not only scales the infrastructure by simplifying the deployment and administration, but also enables the interconnection of those resources.