GT 4.0 Component Fact Sheet: Pre-Web Service Grid Resource Allocation and Management (Pre-WS GRAM)

Table of Contents

1. Brief component overview
2. Summary of features
3. Usability summary
4. Backward compatibility summary
5. Technology dependencies
6. Tested platforms
7. For More Information

1. Brief component overview

The Grid Resource Allocation and Management (GRAM) service provides a single interface for requesting and using remote system resources for the execution of "jobs". The most common use of GRAM is remote application execution and control. It is designed to provide a uniform, flexible interface to job scheduling systems.

2. Summary of features

Features new in release 4.0

  • The ability to select the account under which the remote job will be run. If a user's grid credential is mapped to multiple accounts, then the user can specify in the RSL under which account the job should be run.

Other Supported Features

  • Remote job execution and management
  • Uniform and flexible interface to batch scheduling systems
  • File staging before and after job execution
  • Data streaming of stdout/err during jobs execution

Deprecated Features

  • None

3. Usability summary

Usability improvements for Pre-WS GRAM:

  • improvement #1
  • ...
  • improvement #n

4. Backward compatibility summary

Protocol changes since GT version 3.2

  • GRAM job requests may append the desired local username after the @ symbol in the service path (jobmanager-fork@username). This is done automatically when the username RSL attribute is present.

API changes since GT version 3.2

  • Implementation change: the GRAM client library now parses the RSL string and checks for the username attribute. Previously, the client library did no parsing of the RSL string.

Exception/error changes since GT version 3.2

  • GLOBUS_GRAM_PROTOCOL_ERROR_RSL_USER_NAME - username attribute value is not a literal string.
  • GLOBUS_GRAM_PROTOCOL_ERROR_INVALID_USER_NAME - username attribute present but not running as the specified user (most likely using an old client.)

Schema changes since GT version 3.2

  • There is a new RSL attribute username. If present, the job will be submitted to run as the specified user. If the job manager is not running as that user, it will not run the job.

5. Technology dependencies

Pre-WS GRAM depends on the following GT components:

  • C Common Libraries
  • Pre-WS Authentication and Authorization
  • XIO
  • GridFTP

Pre-WS GRAM depends on the following 3rd party software. The dependency exists only for the batch schedulers configured, thus making job submissions possible to the batch scheduling service:

  • PBS
  • Condor
  • LSF
  • other batch schedulers... (where the GRAM scheduler interface has been implemented)

6. Tested platforms

Tested Platforms for Pre WS GRAM

  • Linux

7. For More Information

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