Simulations on-demand executed in Grid environment
Grid computing has emerged as an attractive alternative, distinguished from conventional distributed computing by its focus on large-scale resource sharing, innovative applications as well as high performance orientation. By developing the architecture to run Computational Fluid Dynamics applications on the Grid, the European initiative FlowGrid has provided industrial and academic users with an unpreceded ability to solve complex problems. With FlowGrid system, Computational Fluid Dynamics users can benefit from accessing the computational power required for performing analysis work without the need to invest in costly parallel computing infrastructure. The first point of contact with the FlowGrid system is the FlowGrid portal. It hides all the details of the Grid infrastructure and associated software to allow users concentrate on their simulations as they would do on their desktop computer. A Web Client enables the transparent submission of complex processing problems across remote computers, the monitoring of running jobs' solution on the Grid and final retrieval of results. Moreover, a certificate is generated for each end-user and resource provider to allow for secure communication between the graphical user interface, called GenIUS, the back-end software and requested computing resources. Overall, the FlowGrid portal provides extensive operations functionality for the management of subscribers, resources providers and the systems made available to the FlowGrid services. Detailed information on the FlowGrid portal have been made available to the research community and to the greater public on the FlowGrid homepage at: http://www.unizar.es/flowgrid/portal.htm
