Middleware & System Software

Like the World Wide Web the Grid will revolutionize the world of computers by offering on demand worldwide access to computing power.
The PC˛ has been working in this sector for years and has established itself as a competence center in the field of resource management. Current research focuses on the problem of how to guarantee the use of the resources with Service Level Agreements (SLA). This research includes the ability to perform fault tolerance mechanisms like checkpointing and migration of SLA agreed jobs and research on the assessment about likelihood of SLA violations. The combined instruments, risk assessment and fault tolerance mechanisms, allow a powerful risk aware management of grid jobs. This improves the guaranteed service quality of the resource management. In addition the PC˛ works on the integration of Web service based Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) into the Grid. Our aim is to combine the strengths of the two areas, loosely coupled services and the secure and easy to deploy grid infrastructures. The result will be the ability of creation and secure performing of business workflows on grid infrastructures. These fields are vital requirements for future commercial use of grid environments.
Resource Management Systems (RMS) are needed for the grid as well as for compute clusters. They allow users and system administrators to access and manage various computing resources like processors, memory, networks, or storage. PC˛ has developed an expandable and modular RMS, called Computing Center Software, which uses a planning based job scheduler. This OpenCCS is used in several projects and its features are continuously extended.

In this field we are currently working on the following projects:

OpenCCS

Computing Center Software, a resource management software for HPC systems

D-Grid

The German Grid Initiative

AssessGrid

Advanced Risk Assessment and Management for Trustable Grids

BIS-Grid

Grid-based integration and orchestration of business information systems

Hydra

Network Embedded System Middleware

Contact for further information:
Jun.-Prof. Dr.-Ing. André Brinkmann