Syllabus

CS599: Introduction to Grid Computing, Fall 2003

 

Instructor:

      Ann Chervenak (pronounced Shur-vu-nak)

      USC Information Sciences Institute, 310-448-8225, annc@isi.edu

      Office Hours: Immediately before class or by appointment

 

Required reading:

      No required textbook

      3 to 4 required technical papers per lecture available on Internet

 

Prerequisites:

      Graduate courses in Operating Systems and Networks (CS551 and CS555)

 

Course description:

      This course provides a graduate-level introduction to wide area distributed computing research, focusing particularly on the middleware infrastructure provided by the Globus project.  The course will begin with a general introduction to grid computing and spend one to two weeks focusing on the major topics of grid research, including security, information management, resource management and data management.  The course will also examine the Open Grid Services Architecture for grid environments and examines in detail other grid projects, including Condor and the Storage Resource Broker.

 

Projects:

      Students are required to work on an original project on a grid computing topic studied in the course.  There will be a list of suggested projects, or the students may choose another project.  These projects will require significant programming work in grid environments.  Achieving a good grade will require that the project contain strong research content. 

 

Exams and Quizzes:

      There will be weekly quizzes on assigned reading material. There will also be a midterm examination.  There will not be a final examination.

 

Class Presentations

      Each student will be required to deliver a 30 to 40-minute presentation on a course topic.  The presentation will be graded. 

 

Academic integrity

      This class will demand the highest standards of academic integrity.  No cheating or plagiarism will be tolerated.  If in any doubt about the rules of plagiarism, students should carefully study the following web sites.  Ignorance of standards for plagiarism is not an excuse.  Violations of academic integrity will be treated with the greatest possible seriousness and will result in failure in the course and official academic proceedings.  

http://www.plagiarism.org

http://www.plagiarism.org/research_site/e_home.html

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_plagiar.html

 

Attendance

      Students are expected to attend class.  Students who miss more than 25% of classes will not receive a passing grade.  This includes students who expect to receive audit credit for the course.

 

Participation

      As in any seminar class, student participation is essential and will affect student grades.

 

Class Web Page

      http://www.isi.edu/~annc/classes/cs599.html

     

Lecture Schedule (subject to change)

      Date

Topic

August 29

Introduction to grid computing: definition of grid, application examples, course overview (Ann Chervenak)

September 5

Grid Security:  Kerberos, Public Key Encryption, Grid Security Infrastructure, Community Authorization Service (Laura Pearlman)

September 12

Information Services: Monitoring and Discovery Service, Network Weather Service (Ben Clifford)

September 19

Resource Management: GRAM, SNAP protocol, OGSI Agreement (Karl Czajkowski)

September 26

Open Grid Services Architecture (Carl Kesselman)

October 3

Data Management Services: GridFTP, Reliable File Transfer Service, Replica Location Service, Metadata Catalog Service (Ann Chervenak)

October 10

Planning and Execution: Chimera, Pegasus, Condor Matchmaker (Ewa Deelman)

October 17

Midterm Exam and Storage Resource Broker

October 24

Condor: System overview, Condor-G, NeST (students)

October 31

DAIS, Legion/Avaki (students)

November 7

Java CoG, DataCutter, Active Proxy-G (students)

November 14

Major Grid Projects: GriPhyN, Earth System Grid, European DataGrid (students)

November 21

Grid Applications (students)

November 28

Thanksgiving holiday

December 5

Class projects due; Project presentations from students

 

 

Evaluation

      The tentative breakdown of how students will be evaluated in the course is as follows. This distribution may change:

Midterm and quizzes

35%

Class project

35%

Attendance and strong participation

15%

Class presentation

15%