AXIS and Grid Computing

1. What is Grid Computing and why do we need it?

When we first introduced AXIS Distributed Processing in 2002 we supported up to seven helpers. It was relatively easy to manually install AXIS on 8 machines, start the helpers, monitor the run status and close the helpers after the batch jobs were finished. Since then, we have developed advanced techniques to improve Distributed Processing through more features, better scalability and more reliability to satisfy customers' needs for large-scale calculations and stochastic analysis. Now we can support 64 processors at once, and will support 256 in a future release. As the number of processors increases, it becomes harder to manage such a big farm. Manually going through each machine to install AXIS, launch and target the helper and so on is not only time-consuming, but also error-prone.

This is where Grid Computing comes into the picture.

According to IBM, our business partner, "Grid Computing enables the virtualization of distributed computing and data resources such as processing, network bandwidth and storage capacity to create a single system image, granting users and applications seamless access to vast IT capabilities. Just as an Internet user views a unified instance of content via the Web, a grid user essentially sees a single, large virtual computer."

With the introduction of AXIS GridLink, AXIS now expands its power into the Grid Computing area to offer users ease of use of Distributed Processing in large-scale.

2. How does AXIS work with Grid Computing?

In the case of the AXIS application, Grid Computing transforms the whole farm - no matter how many machines it has - into the image of one single powerful virtual computer. When working with this virtual computer, the user can easily launch AXIS with a specified version on any number of machines on the farm without physically knowing about their existence. With knowledge of the capability of each machine, the Grid software can start AXIS helpers on faster and less busy machines. All the user needs to do is to let the Grid know what job the user wants to run, and the rest is taken care of by the Grid transparently to the user.

Another great feature that the Grid may offer is AXIS version deployment and management. This allows the user to install and uninstall multiple AXIS versions easily on the farm, as simply as on one computer.

3. Grid Computing Software

AXIS GridLink is a Grid solution to managing the processor farm used for distributed processing of AXIS calculation runs. It offers a comprehensive set of tools that help you create more efficient and secure production environment.

There are industry standard Grid products available to general applications. If you are currently using one of these enterprise Grid products, you still can be benefited from AXIS GridLink because GridLink is particularly designed to work with AXIS and provides some features that are not available from other Grid products. e.g. a general enterprise Grid doesn't know how to gracefully shutdown AXIS helpers when balancing multiple job queue on a server farm, and it might not let you monitor the detailed batch status dialog without logging onto the master server.

AXIS GridLink can be integrated with enterprise Grids and work together seamlessly. In an integrated environment, GridLink assumes that the grid is managing CPU resources on the farm. Before GridLink Launches AXIS, it requests a number of CPU cores from the grid. When a job is finished, GridLink releases CPU cores that were granted to GridLink so that other applications can use them.

GridLink now has been integrated with DataSynapse GridServer, Platform EGO and Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server. We will keep working with other Grid product providers to integrate GridLink with their products in the future.