Computing and Information Systems - Research Publications
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ItemA functional and performance-oriented comparison of AFS and SRB(National e-Science Centre, University of Glasgow, 2008)In this paper the Storage Resource Broker (SRB) [1] and the Andrew File System (AFS) [2] are compared and contrasted in terms of their use as a data storage for Grid based systems. Both the SRB and AFS are distributed file systems capable of storing data produced and consumed by applications and Grid services. The SRB is well established and deployed by many projects globally include widespread deployment across the UK e-Science National Grid Service. AFS is also a distributed file system initially developed as part of the Andrew Project by Carnegie Mellon University and IBM in 1983. AFS is currently being used by the nanoCMOS project [3, 4] for providing secure access to data and applications through usage of Kerberos tokens. While both SRB and AFS can be used as data back ends they have specific properties that make them better suited for different types of usage. In some cases this may be a critical issue where some feature is required but not available in one or both of the candidates. This paper provides a description of these differences, focusing in particular on the security models, their relative performance with a range of file sizes and their general usability. Based on this analysis we present the key criteria that projects should consider for adoption of file based data management.
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ItemExperiences of applying advanced grid authorisation infrastructures(Springer, 2005)The widespread acceptance and uptake of Grid technology can only be achieved if it can be ensured that the security mechanisms needed to support Grid based collaborations are at least as strong as local security mechanisms. The predominant way in which security is currently addressed in the Grid community is through Public Key Infrastructures (PKI) to support authentication. Whilst PKIs address user identity issues, authentication does not provide fine grained control over what users are allowed to do on remote resources (authorisation). The Grid community have put forward numerous software proposals for authorisation infrastructures such as AKENTI [1], CAS [2], CARDEA [3], GSI [4], PERMIS [5,6,7] and VOMS [8,9]. It is clear that for the foreseeable future a collection of solutions will be the norm. To address this, the Global Grid Forum (GGF) have proposed a generic SAML based authorisation API which in principle should allow for fine grained control for authorised access to any Grid service. Experiences in applying and stress testing this API from a variety of different application domains are essential to give insight into the practical aspects of large scale usage of authorisation infrastructures. This paper presents experiences from the DTI funded BRIDGES project [10] and the JISC funded DyVOSE project [11] in using this API with Globus version 3.3 [12] and the PERMIS authorisation infrastructure.
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ItemDevelopment of a grid infrastructure for functional genomics(Springer, 2005)The BRIDGES project is incrementally developing and exploring database integration over six geographically distributed research sites with the framework of a Wellcome Trust biomedical research project (the Cardiovascular Functional Genomics project) to provide a sophisticated infrastructure for bioinfomaticians. Grid technologies are being used to facilitate this integration. Key issues to be investigated in BRIDGES are data integration and data federation, security, user friendliness, access to large scale computational facilities and incorporation of existing bioinformatics software solutions, both for visualisation as well as analysis of genomic data sets. This paper outlines the initial experiences in applying Grid technologies and outlines the on-going designs put forward to address these issues.