Do grids need standardization?
One of the areas in which the interests of scientists and businessmen converge is standardization. If everybody starts making their own kind of grid, then it becomes difficult and expensive to combine grid technologies.
In grid computing, standardization is voluntary. No one can force a community to build middleware to a particular specification, or to adopt a particular security policy. Standardization relies on grid users and builders choosing to implement a solution that works most of the time, for most of the people.
WHY BOTHER ABOUT GRID STANDARDS?
Just as a toaster from the U.S. won’t automatically work in a kitchen in the UK, grid solutions developed for one grid don’t always work for another. If grids are to be widely adopted—if they are to offer real solutions with acceptable risks for industry and e-science—then they must be interoperable, which means the development of standardized, transferable technologies.
WHO IS WORKING ON GRID STANDARDS?
The Open Grid Forum is the largest group working towards standards adoption in grid computing. The OGF provides a global opportunity for volunteers from all walks of grid computing life to contribute to the development of new standards.
The development process usually happens in one of two ways: A group can work to develop best practices in a particular area, and can then approach OGF for endorsement of that work as a particular standard. Or, in reverse, an area of interest is first identified, and then a group forms to work on a standards solution in that area. These processes may sound simple, but in practice, the path to achieving an accepted, implemented standard is long and dotted with potholes.
A STANDARD IN ACTION: GridFTP
Grid computing provides the IT grunt needed to power data-intensive scientific applications, such as drug discovery or high energy physics. As part of this, massive amounts of data must be shunted around the world at high-speed. Although there are many different ways of storing and partitioning such data, the grid community have agreed on just one way of transferring it: GridFTP.
Also known as the “grid file transfer protocol”, GridFTP is the accepted method for securely and reliably transferring large volumes of data across distributed computing grids. It is based upon standard Internet FTP protocol, but is tailored to support the special needs of grid computing, including authentication and confidentiality features, reliability and fault tolerance, and third party and partial file transfer,
GridFTP was developed by the Globus project. The GridFTP Working Group, organized by the Open Grid Forum, continues to coordinate updates to its protocol.
A "DE FACTO" STANDARD: VOMS
“Virtual organizations” are the human backbone of grid computing: groups of researchers from around the world who collaborate on common challenges, using grids to share and integrate their data and resources. The Virtual Organization Management System, or VOMS, is a system that allows distributed VOs to centrally manage the roles and authorizations of their members. Using VOMS, site administrators can generate local credentials for specific VO members, providing them with a single login and access to VO grid resources for a set time.
VOMS was developed by the DataGrid and EGEE projects. Although not an official standard, it is used by many VOs around the world.
