(Post 25/08/2006) As distributed, OptimalGrid is set up to run a sample problem called the Eden model. This Eden model problem is described in detail in the next section. The default setup will involve using two virtual processors that run on a single real processor. Once you verify that OptimalGrid runs on a single processor, you can expand to use any number of processors to run the same problem solution or a different problem solution that you develop.

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• A practical introduction to OptimalGrid - Part I

Section 4. Installing and running OptimalGrid

Overview

As distributed, OptimalGrid is set up to run a sample problem called the Eden model. This Eden model problem is described in detail in the next section. The default setup will involve using two virtual processors that run on a single real processor. Once you verify that OptimalGrid runs on a single processor, you can expand to use any number of processors to run the same problem solution or a different problem solution that you develop.

These installation and invocation instructions are for OptimalGrid Version 1.0.

Requirements

Download the distribution package

Download the OptimalGrid distribution zip file from IBM alphaWorks at http://www.ibm.com/alphaworks/tech/optimalgrid

Install

Unzip the file grid.zip onto your system into a directory of your choice. The OptimalGrid project files will expand out into a grid directory and other subdirectories.

File layout

After extracting the OptimalGrid files, under a directory of your choice, there will be a new grid/ directory that has the structure shown below. If, for example, you unzipped into c:\java\ on your Windows system, then you would have:

Install required and optional components

There are some required and optional Java software products used by OptimalGrid. The jar files for the required components are included in the distribution, but you must obtain and install other files yourself.

Start a TSpaces server

The first step in running the sample problem is to start a TSpaces server on your processor. OptimalGrid uses TSpaces to communicate between the main OptimalGrid problem manager and the various compute agents that are running on other networked machines. So, we need to start up a TSpaces Problem server that will handle the problem coordination. In a setup with many processors, you would also have some TSpaces Edge servers that would handle the communication of edge data between individual compute agents. In this test, we will use the same TSpaces server as both a Problem Server and Edge Server.

Assume that you installed OptimalGrid into c:\java on a Windows system:

cd c:\java\grid
.\ts.bat

If you installed this on a UNIX system into ~/java:

cd ./grid
chmod +x *.sh
./ts.sh

Start two or more compute agents

The compute agents are the processes that actually work on the problem. For the sample problem, we will use just two compute agents running on the same system where you started TSpaces (localhost).

Assume that you installed OptimalGrid into c:\java on a Windows system:

cd c:\java\grid
start .\ca.bat -singlehost localhost
start .\ca.bat -singlehost localhost

The -singlehost localhost tells them to talk to a TSpaces server on this same host processor.

In a real problem, you might use hundreds of compute agents, each running on a different processor. When you are running hundreds of agents, you would obviously want to automate this process. In this first release of the OptimalGrid middleware, you must have a cluster management tool in order to distribute the OptimalGrid.jar file and application resources to all nodes on their cluster.

In a forthcoming release of OptimalGrid, we will include in the OptimalGrid package a Research Nugget technology based on OSGI to make it easy for Grid developers to distribute, update, and manage jar files, config files, and other resources required by any distributed Grid application. Stay tuned to IBM alphaWorks for this exciting forthcoming enhancement.

Start the Problem Manager

Now we will start the OptimalGrid Problem Manager. The default configuration file is set up to have it build and run the Eden model problem as described earlier. A dialog window will appear so that you can change configuration parameters. For this initial run it is not necessary, so you can click the Done button.

The OptimalGrid Problem Manager distributes the Eden model problem to the compute agents, and monitors the network to adjust the load on each Compute Agent.

Assume that you installed OptimalGrid into c:\java on a Windows system:

cd c:\java\grid
.\grid.bat -singlehost localhost

After a few moments' delay, the problem should be distributed to the ComputeAgents (via TSpaces) and the compute agents will put up a window that displays a graphical representation of the system.

Problem termination

If everything runs smoothly, then the console session where you started the OptimalGrid problem manager displays the message:

APM.run() Run is Finished!!

The final status of each Collection of OPCs has been written to the ./log directory with filenames of OPCcCCCtIII.xml where CCC is the collection number and III is the iteration number. These are XML files that currently you must process yourself. However, we do plan to develop tools in the future to make this easier.

(Copyright IBM Corporation)