Announcing: 06/05/2002 ========================================== 1. NetSolve v1.4.1 now available 2. Updated PDF generator now available 3. visPerf NetSolve Monitor now available ========================================== 1. NetSolve v1.4.1 Release Notes ======================================= It's a pleasure to announce the availability of a new maintenance release for NetSolve. This release includes new features as well as a number of bug fixes. If you are using NetSolve version 1.4 or earlier we recommend upgrading to this new release version 1.4.1. The new release is available for download from here; /netsolve Enhancements and New Features ----------------------------- ARPACK updates Added server/agent support for visPerf monitor Matlab task farming Workload reporting fix/scheduling Fixes ----- Agent and server memory leaks Add configure support for MacOSX, NetBSD, FreeBSD Scoped address problem - gethostbyname - IPAddr[0] agent and server now listen on any interface, rather than the first interface returned by gethostbyname() Workload reporting has been improved on IRIX platforms Timing bug - the timeout was increased so that servers don't get inadvertently expired 2. Updated PDF generator now available ======================================= There is now a Problem Description Generator (PDF) available online. This is a Java applet that steps you through a series of questions related to your problem and then outputs a PDF that can be integrated into NetSolve. This generator is available from here; /netsolve/ 3. visPerf NetSolve Monitor ======================================= The visPerf NetSolve Monitor is an application made up of a Java applet monitor and a remote sensor(s). The monitor is able to provide information on client users, computing resource performance, CPU workload, disk I/O, and all of NetSolve's function calls. Please refer to the NetSolve website for further information regarding NetSolve; /netsolve Best regards, NetSolve Development Team netsolve@cs.utk.edu ================================= == NetSolve v1.4 Release Notes == ================================= This note announces the release of the latest version of the NetSolve grid based software system, version 1.4. The software can be downloaded free of charge from the web at: /netsolve/ The NetSolve project is being developed at the University of Tennessee's Innovative Computing Laboratory. It provides NetSolve-enabled programs remote, Grid, access to hardware and software computational resources via its many client application programming interfaces or APIs. In this version, client programs implemented in C, Fortran, Matlab and Mathematica can access the NetSolve system and the services it provides. These services include sophisticated numerical solvers from libraries like LAPACK, ScaLAPACK, PETSc, Aztec, SuperLU, etc. Facilities are available for creating new NetSolve services. All components have been tested on popular UNIX operating systems like Linux, AIX, Irix, OSF, and Solaris. A client interface is available for Microsoft Windows platforms (tested on Windows 2000). The last official distribution of NetSolve was v1.2 released in February 1999. Since then several beta versions of v1.3 were available; many of the enhancements and features listed below were first prototyped in this version. Enhancements and New Features ============================= ** Distributed Storage Infrastructures A Distributed Storage Infrastructure or DSI http://dsi.internet2.edu/ is a technology that allows a program to manage data stored remotely. The Internet Backplane Protocol, IBP, /ibp/ is an example DSI that has been incorporated into this version of NetSolve in an effort to logistically store data in storage depots convenient to NetSolve servers that will run computations on them. This integration allows users to allocate, destroy, read and write data objects to remote storage devices, via IBP, and then point NetSolve servers to these devices to find data to use in computations. The user can thus run computations on remote data and retrieve only the pertinent portion of the output. ** Mathematica Interface The Mathematica client interface to NetSolve first has been non-existent since version 1.1 of NetSolve. This interface has been updated and made compatible with v1.4 allowing even further flexibility and user-freedom to choose a programming environment from which to access the NetSolve system and the services it provides. ** Sparse Matrix Data Structure We have added a new NetSolve object to support internally matrices stored in a sparse format which uses compressed row/column storage. ** Sparse Solver Services The current release of NetSolve gives access to linear system solver routines from the iterative packages Aztec, PETSc, and Itpack, and the direct solvers MA28 (from the Harwell Subroutine Library), and SuperLU. All access is, for now, through default solvers: the Aztec and PETSc solvers are Jacobi-preconditioned BiCGstab, the Itpack solver is Jacobi-preconditioned CG. In the iterative methods, the user supplies the tolerance and maximum number of iterations. We intend to supply user-parameterization in future versions. ** Dense Solver Services NetSolve provides interfaces to all double precision real LAPACK driver routines, as well as interfaces to ScaLAPACK driver routines PDGESV and PDPOSV. Future releases will include interfaces for double precision complex LAPACK driver routines as well as increasing the number of interfaces provided for ScaLAPACK driver routines. ** NWS Integration The load-balancing strategy of NetSolve has been improved through the use of the Network Weather Service http://nws.cs.utk.edu/ within the package. The Network Weather Service (NWS) is a system which provides a way of forecasting dynamically changing performance characteristics, such as the workload, from distributed metacomputing resources. Integrating NWS into NetSolve improves the load-balancing strategy by taking into account the future load instead of the current load of the computational resources. These characteristics can be effectively utilized in scheduling decisions for the computational resources. ** Globus proxy NetSolve tries to leverage other metacomputing systems who may make additional resources available to the user. To this end, we have implemented a set of proxies that negotiate for metacomputing resources on behalf of the client. This makes the client more lightweight and flexible in that it can interoperate with a host of other systems. So far, we have implemented proxies to negotiate for Globus services and of course the standard NetSolve services. Other systems like Condor and Legion are soon to be integrated in this fashion. (This code is a prototype that serves as a proof-of-concept implementation of Grid systems interoperation.) ** Request Sequencing/Data Persistence (C interface only) We have added two additional functions to the C language's API, netsl_sequence_begin and netsl_sequence_end. These functions are used to mark the beginning and end of a sequence of NetSolve requests. The NetSolve system analyzes the input and output parameters of the sequence of requests and minimizes the network traffic by caching data at/near the server(s) so they can be available for multiple requests. Requests are also executed in parallel when possible. ** Security (Kerberos) This latest version of NetSolve implements (rudimentary) Kerberos support for client authentication. Within and across Kerberos realms, the servers can maintain access control lists and deny service to non-privileged clients. The user must use standard Kerberos commands to identify themselves to the Kerberos realm, but once "logged on" there are no differences in transactions from the user's perspective. Kerberized and non-Kerberized components gracefully interact with each other, even when there needs to be a denial of service. ** PDF Generator The Problem Description File (PDF) is the utility that is used to expand the functional capabilities of the NetSolve server. It is an Interface Description Language (IDL) of particular syntax that the user ordinarily had to learn. We have implemented a Java GUI that presents an intuitive interface that guides the user in this process and makes the procedure much easier. ** User's Guide/Tutorials We have also updated and redesigned the NetSolve User's Guide. We have divided it into sections that hope to address the different user's perspectives. Whether an administrator or a user, the guide should provide complete details to every niche of the NetSolve system. We have added a tutorial section to the guide as well. ** Transaction Logging Facilities The NetSolve agent and server are now truly daemonized and never write messages to the terminal, except during initializations. They instead write informative messages as well as possible debugging information to log files. The agent logs every transaction that takes place in a format that is eventually meant to be parsed by a program that will allow administrator's to query specifically for certain information.