From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: andrey mirtchovski To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] The 9grid. In-Reply-To: <004701c36377$96965b00$2248dec2@falken> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 16:27:16 -0600 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 1ac6b35a-eacc-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 On Fri, 15 Aug 2003, Chris Hollis-Locke wrote: > Ok, the various nodes of 9grid will come under different admin domains > but isn't there a single overarching domain - that for authentication, and > who is responsible for it? > the way we see it now, there will be a single authentication server (resembling Globus' certificates, i.e. you trust the authentication server as you trust the certificate authority). by separate administrative domains i mean that the machines here at UofC will be administered by people at the UofC with regards to software, hardware and will still have our own authentication domain for our own stuff. there's no root and we will not give the hostowner password to anyone else :) at any rate, Plan 9 is able to accomodate much wider range of authentication mechanisms than globus, so don't be surprised if there isn't a centralised authentication domain at all. i'm sorry if it doesn't make much sense, but using paradigms from other types of grids just messes it up -- it's much easier to think of it in plan9 terms: there will be a few cpu servers across the world on which your jobs can run if you're a 9grid user. that's all :) as far as job submission, ron could be opposed to it, but running a 'centralized' cpu server, to which one's jobs go, is a good idea if you're limited to a cluster. probably in 9grid we'll have a script which mounts all available nodes' /proc and tells you which one is most idle, isn't that the Plan 9 way? process migration hasn't arrived in Plan 9 (yet) but when it does it probably wouldn't be too hard to accomodate (at least we know it'll be simple). caching and resource discovery are on the table, but i'm not sure i can talk about that right now... ('ls' sounds much simpler than 'LDAP' though, doesn't it? :) andrey