Grids Are Real and Useful Now
Basic Grid services are being deployed to support uniform and secure access to computing, data, and instrument systems that are distributed across organizations
- resource discovery
- uniform access to geographically and organizationally dispersed computing and data resources
- job management
- security, including single sign-on (users authenticate once for access to all authorized resources)
- secure inter-process communication
- Grid system management
Higher level services
- Grid execution management tools (e.g. Condor-G) are being deployed
- Data services providing uniform access to tertiary storage systems and global metadata catalogues (e.g. GridFTP and SRB/MCAT) are being deployed
- Web services supporting application frameworks and science portals are being prototyped
Persistent infrastructure is being built
- Grid services are being maintained on the compute and data systems in prototype production Grids
- Cryptographic authentication supporting single sign-on is being provided through Public Key Infrastructure (PKI)
- Resource discovery services are being maintained (Grid Information Service – distributed directory service)