Performance and Interoperability Issues in Incorporating Cluster Management Systems within a Wide-Area Network-Computing Environment

This paper describes the performance and interoperability issues that arise in the process of integrating cluster management systems into a wide-area network-computing environment, and provides solutions in the context of the Purdue University Network Computing Hubs (PUNCH). The described solution provides users with a single point of access to resources spread across administrative domains, and an intel ligent translation process makes it possible for users to submit jobs to different types of cluster management systems in a transparent manner. The approach does not require any modifications to the cluster management software; however, call-back and caching capabilities that would improve performance and make such systems more interoperable with wide-area computing systems are discussed.