Experiment and Workflow Management Using Cyberaide Shell

• Authors: Gregor von Laszewski;Andrew Younge;Xi He;Kumar Mahinthakumar;Lizhe Wang
• Venue: CCGRID '09 Proceedings of the 2009 9th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster Computing and the Grid
• Year: 2009

In recent years the power of Grid computing has grown exponentially through the development of advanced middleware systems. While usage has increased, the penetration of Grid computing in the scientific community has been less than expected by some. This is due to a steep learning curve and high entry barrier that limit the use of Grid computing and advanced cyberinfrastructure. In order for the scientists to focus on actual scientific tasks, specialized tools and services need to be developed to ease the integration of complex middleware. Our solution is Cyberaide Shell, an advanced but simple to use systemshell which provides access to the powerful cyberinfrastructure available today. Cyberaide Shell provides a dynamic interface that allows access to complex cyberinfrastructure in an easy and intuitive fashion on an ad-hoc basis. This is accomplished by abstracting the complexities of resource, task, and application management through a scriptable command line interface. Through a service integration mechanism, the shell’s functionality is exposed to a wide variety of frameworks and programming languages. Cyberaide Shell includes specialized experiment management and workflow commands that, with the scriptable nature of a shell, provide a set of services which where previously unavailable. The usability of Cyberaide Shell is demonstrated using a Water Threat Management application deployed on the TeraGrid.