Course Information:  CS 599
Introduction to Grid Computing
Fall Semester 2000

•	Instructors :  		

Dr. Ann Chervenak   (pronounced Shur-vu-nak)           
Information Sciences Institute   Rm. 1221    Phone: 310-448-8225     annc@isi.edu
Office Hours:  Tu and Th immediately following class or by appointment

•	Required textbook:

Foster and Kesselman, The Grid:  Blueprint for a New Computing Infrastructure, Mor-
gan Kaufmann Publishers, Inc., 1999.  We will also read recent technical papers.

•	Prerequisites:

You should have taken classes in operating systems and networking, preferably at the 
graduate level.  Some knowledge of distributed systems is also helpful.

•	Course description:

This courses focuses on computational grids.  A grid is the hardware and software 
infrastructure for wide-area distributed computing.  In the first half of the course, we 
discuss the basic services that must be provided by the grid infrastructure, including 
security, resource management, information services and data management.  We 
describe an implemenation of each service in the Globus grid computing environment.  
In the second half of the course, we cover advance topics, including other computa-
tional grid projects. 

•	Projects:

Students will work on a project during the second half of the semester.  This project 
may be a survey of current research in some area of grid computing, or it may involve 
grid research using software such as Globus, Condor or Legion.

The final week of the course will be devoted to project reports.

•	Reading:

It is important for students to read the papers that will be discussed BEFORE class.  
Each student will be required to write several summaries of recent technical papers dis-
cussed in class.  These summaries will be graded.  The summaries will also be posted 
on the web page after the papers are discussed in class.

We may have periodic quizzes on the assigned readings.

•	Class presentations:

Each student (or a small group of students) will give one 30 to 40-minute presentation 
on an assigned technical paper.  This presentation will be graded.

•	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/grid/cs599.html

•	Class Notes

Class notes will be posted on the web page AFTER the material is presented in class.  
Posted notes are not a substitute for attending class or for taking good notes.    

•	Exams

There will not be any final exam for this course.  There may be periodic quizzes on 
assigned readings.  These quizzes are more likely to happen if it appears from class dis-
cussion that students are not reading the papers in advance.

•	Evaluation

This is a tentative breakdown of how students will be evaluated in the course. This dis-
tribution may change!  If we have quizzes on the contents of the technical papers, this 
breakdown is likely to change to give more weight to those quizzes.



TABLE 1. Evaluation

Attendance and strong participation
	20%

Projects
	35%

Paper write-ups  (and quizzes?)
	25%

Class presentation
	20%


•	Tentative Lecture Schedule:


TABLE 2. APPROXIMATE COURSE SCHEDULE

Dates
	Topic
	Chapter/Readings

Aug 29
	Intro to Grids, Course Overview
	Ch. 1 and 2

Aug 31
	Intro to Globus
	Ch. 11 and papers

Sep 5
	The hardware & network environment of the grid
	Ch. 17, 18-21

Sep 7
	Grid security:  authentication, access control
	Ch. 16 and papers

Sep 12
	Grid security:  encryption
	
Sep 14
	Globus security
	
Sep 19
	Resource management
	Ch. 12 and papers

Sep 21
	Resource management:  scheduling, QoS
	
Sep 26
	Globus resource management (Karl Cz.)
	
Sep 28
	Information management
	papers

Oct 3
	Directory services using LDAP
	papers

Oct 5
	Globus Information Management (Steve F.)
	papers

Oct 10
	Grid Performance Measurement (Steve F.)
	Ch. 14

Oct 12
	Globus Applications and Testbeds (Carl K.)
	Ch. 3 to 6, Ch. 22

Oct 17
	POSSIBLY NO CLASS (Grid Forum in Boston)
	
Oct 19
	Data management
	Ch. 5 and papers

Oct 24
	Globus Data management:  data transport, replicas
	papers

Oct 26
	The Condor System (Carl K. and student)
	Ch. 13

Oct 31
	Condor (2 student presentations)
	papers

Nov 2
	Advanced Scheduling (Carl K. and student)
	papers

Nov 7
	NO CLASS (Supercomputing ‘00 in Dallas)
	work on projects

Nov 9
	NO CLASS (Supercomputing ‘00 in Dallas)
	work on projects

Nov 14
	The Storage Resource Broker (Ann and student)
	papers

Nov 16
	Resource reservations (Carl and student)
	papers

Nov 21
	The Legion System (Ann and student)
	Ch. 9 and papers

Nov 23
	Thanksgiving
	
Nov 28
	Legion (2 student presentations)
	papers

Nov 30
	International Grid Projects (Carl and student)
	papers

Dec 5
	Student Project Reports
	
Dec 7
	Student Project Reports