National Science Foundation CITEAM Proposal: Blast on Condor How Will This Help InstAbbrev

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National Science FoundationCI-TEAM
ProposalBlast on CondorHow Will This Help
InstAbbrev?

• Your Name Here
• Your Job Title Here
• Your Department Here
• Your Institution Name Here
• Date of Presentation

Your Institutions Logo Here
http//www.cs.wisc.edu/condor/
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Outline

• What is Condor?
• What is BLAST?
• The Condor/BLAST NSF CI-TEAM Project
• Condor Practicalities
• Summary

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What is Condor?
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Desktop PCs Are Idle Half the Day
Desktop PCs tend to be very active during the
workday.
But at night, during most of the year, theyre
idle. So were only getting half their value.
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Supercomputing at Night

• Weve got lots of desktop PCs that are idle
  during the evening and during intersessions.
• Wouldnt it be great to put them to work on
  something useful to InstAbbrev?
• For example, PROJECT(S) AT YOUR INSTITUTION.

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Supercomputing at Night Example

• SETI the Search for Extra-Terrestrial
  Intelligence is looking for evidence of green
  bug-eyed monsters on other planets, by mining
  radio telescope data.
• SETI_at_home runs number crunching software as a
  screensaver on idle PCs around the world.
• There are many similar projects
• folding_at_home (protein folding)
• climateprediction.net
• Einstein_at_Home (Laser Interferometer Gravitational
  wave Observatory)
• LHC_at_home (Large Hadron Collider)
• Predictor_at_home (proteins for biomedical research)
• Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (mathematics)

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Condor is Like SETI_at_home

• Condor steals computing time on existing desktop
  PCs when theyre idle.
• Condor runs in background when no one is sitting
  at the desk.
• Condor allows us to get much more value out of
  the hardware that weve already purchased,
  because theres little or no idle time.

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Condor is Better Than SETI_at_home

• Condor is general purpose and can work for any
  loosely coupled application.
• Condor can do all of its I/O over the network,
  not using the desktop PCs local disk.
• Anyone who uses Condor is automatically doing
  Grid Computing, which the federal research
  funding agencies are really pushing.

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How is Condor Helpful?

• FREE under the proposed NSF project (if funded).
• Repurpose idle time on existing desktop PCs
  weve already paid for the hardware, and the rest
  of the costs will be covered by NSF (if funded).
• Enable research that involves lots of computing.
• Share multiple independent Condor pools among
  various institutions (flocking) so well get
  access to far more computing resources than weve
  actually paid for.
• Quick dirty Grid Computing resource, to get us
  accustomed to using and hosting Grids.

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Flocking

• Each institution can have its own, independently
  managed Condor pool.
• Independently owned and managed Condor pools can
  flock behave as if they are one giant
  superpool.
• On local PCs here at InstAbbrev, top priority
  will always go to our local users.
• But, we can get access to other institutions
  Condor pools.

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BLAST
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What is BLAST?

• BLAST (Basic Linear Alignment Search Tool) is the
  most popular bioinformatics software package.
• BLAST compares strips of genetic data (A,C,G,T)
  against databases of known genetic information.
• BLAST is used by everyone from undergraduates to
  top researchers.

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BLAST on Condor

• The Condor group at the University of Wisconsin
  has already implemented BLAST on Condor.
• They are providing free help with deploying BLAST
  on the NSF CI-TEAM projects Condor pool.
• So, well have access to a huge BLAST resource
  thousands of PCs.

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How Will We Use BLAST?

• FILL THIS IN YOURSELF.

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How Will We Use Condor?

• FILL THIS IN YOURSELF.

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NSF CI-TEAM Project
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NSF CI-TEAM Program

• The NSF Cyberinfrastructure TEAM program is a
  brand new program.
• It is providing grants of up to 250,000 for up
  to 2 years.
• One of CI-TEAMs goals is to expand
  Cyberinfrastructure for example, supercomputing
  to institutions and people that traditionally
  havent had much access.

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Our NSF CI-TEAM Project

• The University of Oklahoma (OU) is leading an NSF
  CI-TEAM project.
• The focus is on setting up Condor pools all over
  Oklahoma and the region.
• The kickstart application will be BLAST, but
  these Condor pools will be available for any
  appropriate application.
• Most of the money in OUs CI-TEAM proposal
  will go to institutions like ours, for software
  licenses and PCs to manage the Condor pools.

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An Added Bonus

• The OU Supercomputing Center for Education
  Research (OSCER), which is leading this CI-TEAM
  project, has several large supercomputers.
• OSCERs policy is that anyone can have access to
  OSCERs supercomputers, if they are on a project
  that has an OU faculty or staff member as the
  Principal or Co-Principal Investigator.
• The PI of this NSF CI-TEAM project will be at OU.
• So, as a bonus, everyone at InstAbbrev who is
  on the CI-TEAM project and their students
  will get FREE access to OSCERs supercomputers!

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Condor Practicalities
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What Will Be Needed?

• We will need
• 1 PC to manage Condor
• for each PC to be Condorized
• 1 VMware software license _at_ 85 per PC
  (includes 2nd year of support)
• Condor software license _at_ 0 per PC
• Linux software license _at_ 0 per PC.
• But we wont have to pay any of this!

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Cost to InstAbbrev 0

• Cost to InstAbbrev 0
• Cost to NSF CI-TEAM project
• 85 per PC for software
• 1500 per institution for hardware 1 PC to
  manage the pool of Condor-enabled PCs.
• The NSF CI-TEAM grant will pay for all of this.
• So, we should only commit to Condor ONLY if the
  NSF CI-TEAM proposal is funded.

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Our Obligations 0

• InstAbbrev will be obliged to pay NOTHING
• If the NSF CI-TEAM proposal is fully funded, then
  there will be ample money available for our
  costs.
• If the NSF CI-TEAM proposal is funded at a
  reduced budget level, then well reduce the
  number of Condor-enabled PCs proportionally.
• If the NSF CI-TEAM proposal isnt funded, then
  the project simply wont happen.

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Our Obligations Labor

• Our IT staff will install Condor and the related
  support software on our PCs and the freely
  provided management PC.
• OU IT staff will provide FREE help and advice.
• OU IT staff WONT TOUCH our PCs, unless we
  specifically ask them to.
• Our labor cost is expected to be in the range of
  10 - 40 worker hours per year.

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Security

• To date, there have been no known incidents of a
  security breach attributable to Condor despite
  the fact that Condor is currently running on
  over 50,000 PCs around the world.
• Condor can run entirely without
  administrator/root privileges.
• If there are firewall issues, Condor can work
  within them.

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What Will We Do with Condor?

• Loosely coupled problems zillions of small
  jobs
• LOCAL EXAMPLES HERE

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Summary
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Summary

• Get more value out of hardware already paid for
• Costs to InstAbbrev
• 0
• Modest labor with free help
• No security issues
• Includes free access to OU supercomputers
• Can do exciting projects
• Examples