Let us introduce you to Volunteer Garage, a new website on volunteer computing, developed by the e-ScienceTalk project.  Volunteer Garage provides information on the history, nuts and bolts, middleware, and involved projects in volunteer computing with a lot of background from the developers of this groundbreaking way of raising computing power for science.  Do have a look at http://www.volunteer-computing.org/ 

Let us introduce you to Volunteer Garage, a new website on volunteer computing, developed by the e-ScienceTalk project.  Volunteer Garage provides information on the history, nuts and bolts, middleware, and involved projects in volunteer computing with a lot of background from the developers of this groundbreaking way of raising computing power for science.  Do have a look at http://www.volunteer-computing.org/ 

DEGISCO and EDGI partner Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) has released XtremWeb 8.0.2.

The following corrections have been introduced:

• on the server side, the scheduling has been improved: hosts.incomingconnection is now taken into account to ensure a server like job is not sent to a volunteer resource where incoming connections are not allowed
• on the server side, the scheduling has been improved: restoring a feature from XtremWeb 1.8.0 by INRIA: "expected host" so that the end user can specify at submission time the expected volunteer resource to run the job. Note, that if the expected host does not request a job or does not match the requirements (OS, CPU...), the job is never computed.
• the DG to SG bridge is now compatible with shared applications so that VirtualBox on EGI resources can be used
• some bugs corrected on client side regarding application registration and task management
• a bug corrected on temporary file usage: they are now cleaned at software exit
• the REST interface has been completely rewritten

New features include:

1. The creation of new Live CD can be customized

This is done by providing several optional files:

• a text file 'user.packages' may be provided to install custom packages: this file must contain a space separated packages list
• a text file 'user.hostname' may be provided to customize the LiveCD hostname: this file must contain the host name only
• any package files are installed on the fly (*.rpm or *.deb, depending on the LiveCD OS)

2. The client can now be used to create SmartSockets end point, independently of any task

This may be useful to create SmartSockets tunnel from a running VM to the client PC

• e.g. mount the client FS inside the running VM

3. A new Mac OS X package "xwhep.vworker" to deploy the middleware inside a VM

DEGISCO and EDGI partner Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) has released XtremWeb 8.0.2.

The following corrections have been introduced:

• on the server side, the scheduling has been improved: hosts.incomingconnection is now taken into account to ensure a server like job is not sent to a volunteer resource where incoming connections are not allowed
• on the server side, the scheduling has been improved: restoring a feature from XtremWeb 1.8.0 by INRIA: "expected host" so that the end user can specify at submission time the expected volunteer resource to run the job. Note, that if the expected host does not request a job or does not match the requirements (OS, CPU...), the job is never computed.
• the DG to SG bridge is now compatible with shared applications so that VirtualBox on EGI resources can be used
• some bugs corrected on client side regarding application registration and task management
• a bug corrected on temporary file usage: they are now cleaned at software exit
• the REST interface has been completely rewritten

New features include:

1. The creation of new Live CD can be customized

This is done by providing several optional files:

• a text file 'user.packages' may be provided to install custom packages: this file must contain a space separated packages list
• a text file 'user.hostname' may be provided to customize the LiveCD hostname: this file must contain the host name only
• any package files are installed on the fly (*.rpm or *.deb, depending on the LiveCD OS)

2. The client can now be used to create SmartSockets end point, independently of any task

This may be useful to create SmartSockets tunnel from a running VM to the client PC

• e.g. mount the client FS inside the running VM

3. A new Mac OS X package "xwhep.vworker" to deploy the middleware inside a VM

DEGISCO and EDGI partner Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) has released XtremWeb 8.0.2.

The following corrections have been introduced:

• on the server side, the scheduling has been improved: hosts.incomingconnection is now taken into account to ensure a server like job is not sent to a volunteer resource where incoming connections are not allowed
• on the server side, the scheduling has been improved: restoring a feature from XtremWeb 1.8.0 by INRIA: "expected host" so that the end user can specify at submission time the expected volunteer resource to run the job. Note, that if the expected host does not request a job or does not match the requirements (OS, CPU...), the job is never computed.
• the DG to SG bridge is now compatible with shared applications so that VirtualBox on EGI resources can be used
• some bugs corrected on client side regarding application registration and task management
• a bug corrected on temporary file usage: they are now cleaned at software exit
• the REST interface has been completely rewritten

New features include:

1. The creation of new Live CD can be customized

This is done by providing several optional files:

• a text file 'user.packages' may be provided to install custom packages: this file must contain a space separated packages list
• a text file 'user.hostname' may be provided to customize the LiveCD hostname: this file must contain the host name only
• any package files are installed on the fly (*.rpm or *.deb, depending on the LiveCD OS)

2. The client can now be used to create SmartSockets end point, independently of any task

This may be useful to create SmartSockets tunnel from a running VM to the client PC

• e.g. mount the client FS inside the running VM

3. A new Mac OS X package "xwhep.vworker" to deploy the middleware inside a VM

From now on Galaxy workflows are supported in the SHIWA Simulation Platform.

The workflow engine interface specification describes how Galaxy workflows should be deployed to GEMLCA. This document is available in the SHIWA Repository. An example workflow implementation has been uploaded to the repository and to GEMLCA, see: Exons-Galaxy-central-1.0.

To reach out to more users, the SHIWA Simulation Platform has been added to the EGI Application Database.

Accessible from here.

The Memorandum of Understanding between the SHIWA and SCI-BUS projects has been signed by the technical coordinators of the projects.

Kitti Varga (SHIWA) and Zoltan Farkas (SCI-BUS) are signing the Memorandum of Understanding documents.

As a warming up for the upcoming ISC'12 event in Hamburg between 17-21 June 2012, the ISC organisation is posting articles on the ISC'12 website to provide updates on the state-of-the-art HPC projects, research, systems, products and services in Europe, Asia, the U.S. and the rest of the world. One of the recent blog articles is provided by Ad Emmen from AlmereGrid. In "How to reach Exascale today with 50 million or a few more laptops" he explains how exascale computing could be already performed today by means of volunteer grid computing resources. Of course, large investments and creative thinking about upgrading the "pleasantly parallel" programmes are hurdles that need to be taken.  You can read the entire article at the ISC HPC Blog page.

The 3rd SHIWA Newsletter is available for download from here.

Further newsletters can be accessed from the newsletter page.

Peter Kacsuk, the coordinator of the SCI-BUS project gave a detailed explanation about the project on the EGI Community Forum 2012. The interview was made during the forum, which was held at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) in Garching near Munich, Germany between 26-30 March 2012.

About the project

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We are happy to announce that Laboratory of Parallel and Distributed Systems will host a joint summer school between read more

Prof. Dr.-Ing. André Brinkmann from the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz received a very positive feedback for his presentation on Desktop Grids and UNICORE during the Unicore Forum Meeting on March 26, 2012.  The Unicore Forum Meeting was colocated with the EGI Community Forum, held March 26-30, 2012 in München, Germany.

Three ongoing FP7 projects - SCI-BUS, SHIWA and EDGI, organize a summer school in Budapest between 2 and 6 July 2012 to demonstrate various aspects of user support for the European Grid and Cloud infrastructures. There are already several well established Grid and Cloud infrastructures in Europe. The next issue is how to exploit these infrastructures, how to port and develop application for these infrastructures and how to extend their user communities. The main goal of this summer school is to give answers for these questions and to promote best practice examples for potential application developers and users of e-science infrastructures. More information is available at http://www.lpds.sztaki.hu/summerschool2012/

International Science Grid This Week (iSGTW) names IDGF member, the Charity Engine, as a green cloud computing platform. It stays cool by automatically shifting data processing to computers in the coldest parts of the globe, reducing the overall heat generated globally, according to iSGTW. The article explains that the Charity Engine uses a technique called Winternet, that allows shifting processing to PCs in the coolest parts of the world. This form of energy efficiency is known as a 'Follow the Moon' system, by which companies with distributed data centers save costs, moving workloads to data centers in different time zones during off-peak utility rates, according to Adrian Giordani, writer of the iSGTW contribution. The article is available at http://www.isgtw.org/spotlight/greenest-volunteer-grid-them-all.

The SHIWA repository has been updated. The new version supports the deployment of workflow implementations to GEMLCA from the repository GUI. The repository can be accessed at the same location at: http://repo.shiwa-workflow.eu.

The WF Developer, Validator and Admin manual describe the new extensions and the Workflow Engine Interface Guide provides further guidelines.

The largest Russian grid event International Conference "Distributed Computing and Grid-technologies in Science and Education" will be held at the Laboratory of Information Technologies (LIT) of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) on 16-21 July, 2012. The conference takes place in Dubna - a quiet and picturesque town near Moscow standing on the Volga river.

The conference will cover following topics :

* Experience accumulated on the implementation and exploitation of grid infrastructures;
* Methods and technologies of distributed computing, architecture topics;
* Network infrastructure for distributed data processing and storage;
* Algorithms and methods of solving applied problems in distributed computing environments;
* Theory, modeling, and methods of distributed data processing;
* Distributed information systems: implementation technologies and usage;
* Cloud computing and consolidation of the distributed resources;
* Grid-applications in science (high-energy physics, computational chemistry, biology and biomedicine, Earth science, economics, etc.);
* Education in the field of distributed computing and Grid technologies.

The conference will have the special Desktop Grid track devoted to the end of the DEGISCO project and Desktop Grid tutorial. More information on abstract submission, visas, travel and accommodation is available from the conference web-site: http://grid2012.jinr.ru