Grid Infrastructure

GRID is a software and hardware infrastructure providing safe, compatible, ubiquitous and inexpensive access to high-power computing resources. It may be treated as a “virtual supercomputer” composed from clusters interconnected via a net, and weakly bounded heterogeneous computers running together to complete a host of tasks. From a network-based organization viewpoint, GRID is an open standardized environment providing flexible, secure, cooperative sharing of computing resources, as well as of data storage, which are a constituent part of this environment within one virtual organization.

GRID COMPUTING

It is a form of distributed calculations with the dynamic (during applications' run time) selection, separation and integration of geographically dispersed autonomous resources on demand, taking into account their availability, performance, cost, as well as specific computing needs and organization policy. This technology is used to solve scientific and mathematical problems requiring substantial computing resources. Grid computing is also used in commerce infrastructure to solve resource-intensive tasks such as economic forecasting, seismic analysis, development and study of the properties of new drugs.

GRID AT JINR

JINR GRID is designed to process large amounts of data coming from the LHC (Large Hadron Collider). Two GRID sites are built at JINR, i.e. the 1st level resource center (T1_RU_JUNR) for the CMS experiment and the 2nd resource center (JINR-LCG2) for ATLAS, Alice, CMS, LHCb, STAR, BES, COMPASS and other experiments. The sites are completely integrated into the global (world) grid infrastructure of the WLCG (Worldwide LHC Computing Grid) project.

WHO CAN USE IT?

• JINR employees as members of Virtual Organizations
• Members of Virtual Organizations of the WLCG project