[tsc] comments from a relative newbie

[Chris Kantarjiev]

Dave (and all),

Here's a draft to replace section 1.3. I'll incorporate any feedback I get by tomorrow and check in an updated version of the document.

I haven't really thought about the other sections of the opening, but I will do so.

Best,
chris

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The long-term vision of Grid can be summed up as follows: "Distributed
computing across multiple administrative domains." 

The notion of distributed computing as used in this definition
includes a wealth of highly complex technologies, some still the focus
of research. This definition complicates matters further by including
operation across multiple domains of administrative control. The
security, privacy, economic and political aspects of Grids increase 
significantly with the introduction of multiple administrative
domains.

The concept of Grid has grown from serendipitous cycle recovery
projects such as SETI at Home, to planned desktop cycle sharing via tools
such as Condor, to Grids built on dedicated resources, ranging from
blade servers in a corporate data center to trans-national collections
of supercomputers. Our focus is on standards and tools to effectively
build and utilize the last of these.

We believe that Grid is composed from the following characteristics
and goals:

    - infrastructure virtualization
    - resource pooling & sharing
    - self monitoring & improvement
    - dynamic resource provisioning
    - highest quality of service 

Not all of these are in every Grid, but every Grid has several of
them.

We find that it is helpful to use a taxonomy of different "Grids" in
discussions. This is not a strict taxonomy such as used by botanists,
but instead a shorthand notation that points toward a particular usage
style:

    - Collaboration Grids. These Grids involve multiple organizations
      and individuals, security domains, protocols, discovery
      mechanisms, and heterogeneous hardware, collaborating to
      share their resources to make the most effective use of it for
      their combined user communities. This is the original and
      long-term vision of Grids. 

    - Data Center Grids. These Grids are in most ways as complete
      technically as Collaboration Grids and involve the complete
      dynamic life cycle of service deployment, provisioning,
      management and decommissioning as part of their normal
      operation.

      At first glance, they may appear to be missing the aspect of
      multiple administrative domains, but that is typically an
      illusion. While the funding may come from a single source, and
      the administration carried out by a single organization, there
      is typically just as much tension among the various user
      entities as in a Collaboration Grid. 

      For example, in the Utility Computing use case, a Data Center Grid
      exists inside a single Enterprise, but provides services for
      many individual political/security domains on an infrastructure
      managed with grid protocols, subject to varying service level
      agreements and payment schemes. This results in multiple domains 
      sitting on top of an integrated domain, with a complex hierarchy
      of security constraints, resource lifetimes and performance
      requirements. 

    - Cluster Grids. Aimed at high performance/throughput computing,
      these Grids are mostly workload scheduling environments. They
      tend to be less dynamically deployed and more homogeneous in
      their construction. Their services are either generic in nature,
      e.g., a job submission service, or provide the same service all
      the time. The provisioning decisions may be almost entirely
      driven by service level agreements for a fixed set of services 
      and customers. They do not typically support the whole service
      provisioning life cycle.

It is perhaps better to think of these (and others) as a set of
perspectives, taken from different points against the same vision of
Grid as a pervasive, shared, integrated platform.

Much of the work of the OGF has its origins in the ongoing efforts
taken from the GGF and EGA actiities. Although OGF remains open to new
and innovative approaches to Grid computing, much (but by no means
all) of the work outlined here has been underway for some time as part
of either the "Open Grid Services Architecture" or the "Reference
Model and Use Cases". These two bodies of work continue to inform and 
guide our strategy going forward.

-----Original Message-----
>From David Snelling <david.snelling at uk.fujitsu.com>
Sent Mon 11/27/2006 8:38 AM
To Chris Kantarjiev <CHRIS.KANTARJIEV at oracle.com>
Cc TSC <tsc at ogf.org>
Subject Re: [tsc] comments from a relative newbie

Chris,

In a chat with Mark today, we rationalized that it is unlikely that  
many changes are possible in the TSC Document before the end of the  
week. However, the opening section (1.3 in particular) seems to be  
important to the BoD and others. I like your thoughts here on  
refining the definition/attributes of different notions of Grid.

Can I ask you to have a go at editing this section before the end of  
the week?