Cooperation Project between TUC and MEGWare Computer GmbH conducted by TUC

Funded by SMWA Freistaat Sachsen

Cluster-of-Clusters(CoC) -Grid Project

Cluster systems are well established as computing resources due to their good price-performance ratio. Even increased performance of cluster systems can be achieved by building up one big system of single clusters, a so-called "grid" or a "coc" ("cluster-of-clusters"). Communication (data exchange) between the single nodes of a cluster is done by means of dedicated software, often based on MPI functions.

MPI-based communication software like Globus/MPICH-G2 generally treats individual clusters of a cluster grid as an integral computing resource having one access point. With regards to communication this means that there is no provision for peer-to-peer communication between nodes of different clusters. In particular case of wide area low-throughput links between clusters this may not be a performance bottleneck. Whereas when sub-clusters of a cluster grid exchange data within the system area there is the need of full peer-to-peer parallelism, thus allowing high speed parallel links even between nodes of different clusters in a coc grid.

We address the challenge of exploiting the full communication capabilities of such heterogeneous distributed Cluster-of-clusters-(CoC) Grids while maintaining the principal structures and communication API's given by the adopted Grid software system like GLOBUS.

To provide a facility for studying heterogeneous CoC-Grids we have built an appropriate CoC Grid testbed which is continually updated.

The overall focus is on the creation of communication layers of heterogeneous CoC-Grids within a system environment which are efficient as well as portable (one or a few racks, one administration domain) that fit seamlessly into larger grid environments.

The project "Entwicklung eines Cluster-of-clusters(CoC)-basierten Leistungsserver-Prototypen" (Project-Number 7455/1180) is funded within the framework for technology promotion by means of the European Fund for Regional Development (EFRE) 2000-2006 as well as by means of the Freistaat Sachsen, Ministerium für Wirtschaft und Arbeit.