Computing Jun Ni, Ph.D. M.E. Department of Computer Science The University of Iowa
Unutilized computing resources
IT Resource Average Daytime
Utilization Windows Servers<5% UNIX Servers 15 20% Desktops <5%
Values
Developed strong roots in the global
academic and research communities over the last decade Integrating large scale computing facility and resources Re-use unutilized resources Leverage multidisciplinary collaboration Change the culture of academic research
Values
Grid Computing for business
enterprises Accelerating product development Reducing infrastructure and operational costs Leveraging existing technology investments Increasing corporate productivity strongest low cost but high throughput solution that allows companies to optimize and leverage existing IT infrastructure and investments
Leveraging Existing Hardware
Investments and Resources
Tremendous amount of unused capacity in
academic or enterprise Grids can be deployed on an existing infrastructureincluding the multitude of desktops and existing serversand thereby mitigate the need for new hardware systems. Grids deployed on existing desktops and servers provide over 93 percent in up-front hardware cost savings when compared to High Performance Computing Systems
Leveraging Existing Hardware
Investments and Resources
Costs savings are not limited to
diminished hardware and software expenditure but are also being derived by eliminating expenditure on air conditioning, electricity, and in many cases, development of new data centers.
Leveraging Existing Hardware
Investments and Resources
It is important that these savings not
be overlooked when comparing Grid Computing solutions with other computing options.
Leveraging Existing Hardware
Investments and Resources
Clusters, for example, are heavy
pieces of equipment. A single cabinet containing just 16 nodes can weigh approximately 1200 lbs. It and its accessories will produce more than 20,000 BTUs an hour and will need to be kept between 60 F and 68 F.
Leveraging Existing Hardware
Investments and Resources
The additional cooling requirements can
easily overwhelm even the best of commercial cooling systems and may require expenditure on supplemental cooling systems. Additionally, new power sources may be required if the existing ones cannot handle the two 15 amp circuits required for each 16 node system.
Leveraging Existing Hardware
Investments and Resources
If the above environmental, power, and spatial
requirements cannot be met within the existing data center, then a new one will have to be constructed (or leased). A current Tier IV data center build cost is US $6,600.00 per 16-node HPC system and it generally takes 15 to 20 months to construct. These non-trivial infrastructure upgrade expenses usually alone are enough justification for leveraging existing computational resources for deploying grids.
Reducing Operational Expenses
Grid Computing brings a level of
automation and ease previously unseen in the IT environments. Key self-healing and self-optimizing capabilities free system administrators from mundane tasks and allow them to focus on high-value, important system administration activities that are longer term and more interesting.
Reducing Operational Expenses
The ability of Grids to cross departmental
and geographical boundaries uniformly increases the level of computational capacity across the whole academic or enterpirse and enhances the level of redundancy in the infrastructure. This is a major breakthrough for system administrators who always seem to be chasing systems outages.
Reducing Operational Expenses
The operational expenses of a Grid Computing
deployment are 73 percent less than for comparable HPC-based solutions. Many of the existing cluster solutions are based on open-source and unsupported and complex cluster management software. Operational expenses associated with these deployments have been so high that many academic and enterprises are being forced to outsource management of HPC systems to their suppliers.
Reducing Operational Expenses
HPC installations in data centers can
cause substantial disruptions and potential downtime. In fact, 54 percent of data center site infrastructure failures are coincident with human activities.
Creating a Scalable and Flexible
IT Infrastructure
Traditionally, IT managers have been forced into
making large-step function increases in spending to accommodate slight increases in infrastructure requirements. Even sparsely populated symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) machines are quite a capacity and cost overshoot. IT managers either spend the money for a system that remains underutilized for some time or force the users to live under the tyranny of an overloaded system until such a time as the load justifies purchase of another system. Neither scenario is tenable in a fast evolving research or business environment.
Creating a Scalable and Flexible
IT Infrastructure
Grid Computing allows institutions or
company to add resources linearly based on real-time business requirements. These resources can be derived from within the institution or enterprise or from outside utility computing services. Never again do projects have to be put on hold for a lack of computational capacity, data center space, or system priority.
Creating a Scalable and Flexible
IT Infrastructure
The entire compute infrastructure of
the research institutes or enterprise is available. Grid Computing can help bring about the end of departmental silos and expose computational assets curtained by server bureaucracy; a great cultural revolution.
Creating a Scalable and Flexible
IT Infrastructure
Yet, while departments will be
making their resources accessible to the whole organization, Grid Computing still allows them to maintain local control. (That is the issue of centralization, decentralization, or semicentralization (quasi)
Risk Analysis
Risk factors that usually plague the
deployments of Grid computing technology, and analyze the vulnerabilities of Grid Computing deployments for applications
Risk Analysis
Break the culture is the major key in
developing Grids and deploy Grids for applications
Risk Analysis
Like most software (and hardware)
vendors, Grid Computing vendors would probably prefer it if their software lockedin a customer for a future revenue stream. However,IT managers or Grid developers will not be making any significant investments in durable, complementary assets, which promote lock-in.
Risk Analysis
Although cluster and SMP solutions will
require significant investment in hardware, software and supporting infrastructure may contribute to customer lock-in. Customers should pay keen attention to which vendors are supporting the Grid Computing standards activities such as the Global Grid Forum. (service oriented marketing and business)
Risk Analysis
Once a grid has been deployed, the
primary switching cost will be driven by the effort required to integrate and enable applications to work on whatever replacement grid infrastructure that has been selected. This is usually performed by utilizing software development toolkits and is generally not too significant, but nonetheless should be carefully reviewed.
Risk Analysis
Another way to mitigate switching
costs is to introduce new grid software to support new gridenabled applications, while letting the existing software deployment and its integration with legacy grid software remain unchanged.
Risk Analysis
The final risk factor is of project
failure, either due to bad project management or incorrect needs assessment. One way to mitigate the risk of project failure is to take advantage of hosted pilot and professional services offered by grid software vendors.
Risk Analysis
This will allow the IT manager to
accurately pre-assess the suitability of the grid software, level of integration required, and feasibility (application speedup times, productivity gains, etc.). Hosted pilots are conducted solely on the vendors data centers and have no impact on the operations.