SpectroGrid

The paradigm of research is shifting toward sharing of resources such as computers, instruments, and software, across multiple organizations. Controlled resource sharing allows budget savings and enables broader access to expensive hardware and software.

SpectroGrid is a distributed software system based on Grid technologies, which provides access to remote Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy instruments. The instruments are located at various sites and are controlled by software that runs on computers belonging to different authorization domains. SpectroGrid has been designed to meet the requirements of secure and seamless access and to allow controlled usage of the instruments along with instrument booking for experiments. Grid technologies have been employed to this end.

We have blended three main technologies in the design of our system:

• The Grid Security Infrastructure (GSI) provided by the Globus Toolkit
• The GSI-enabled version of Secure Shell (SSH), for remote execution of the software controlling the instruments
• Web Services for controlling access to the instruments and reserving time slots for the experiments.

The reservation component serves a dual role: on the one hand, it allows managers to associate instruments with projects and define policies such as instrument allocations, user roles and quotas; on the other hand, it provides users with a tool for scheduling experiments.

The use of GSI along with a Proxy store server makes it possible for users to have portable credentials: that is, a user only need to have his/her certificate and private key in a single location, but can access the instruments from any machine without compromising the private key.

GSI-enabled SSH is used along with X11 forwarding, so that the remote application's Graphical User Interface (GUI) is visible to the user, and the user is able to control the experiment via the GUI.

The system is composed of three main components: a Java GUI client for remote access to the instrument and for user credential management; a set of Web services that support instrument reservation and user management; and a database that contains user accounting and authorization information, as well as the information about the available instruments and their controlling computers.

Spectrogrid Software is available in English only. Please contact André Charbonneau at 993-3129 if you require assistance.