Sun Microsystems 10 manual Grid computing with isolation, Requirement, Solution, Assessment

Version 3.1-enSolaris 10 Container Guide - 3.1 3. Use Cases Effective: 30/11/2009

3. Use Cases

The following chapter discusses a variety of use cases for Solaris Containers and evaluates them.

3.1. Grid computing with isolation

Requirement

[ug] There is a need within a company to use free cycles on existing computers to perform a certain amount of computing work in the background.

Grid software such as Sun GridEngine is suitable for this. However, the processes then running in the grid should be blocked from seeing other processes in the system.

Solution

[ug] Sun GridEngine is installed in one zone on computers that have spare capacity:

∙Sparse-root zones are used (4.1.1 Sparse-root zones).

∙Software and data are installed in the global zone per NFS.

∙Sun GridEngine is installed in the local zone.

∙Automatic creation of the zone (5.1.14 Automatic quick installation of zones).

∙Software installation per lofs from a global zone filesystem

Assessment

[ug] This use case has the following characteristics:

∙Computers can use spare capacities at defined times.

∙Other application data remain protected from inspection. This frequently increases the willingness of the persons responsible for the application to make the computers available for this purpose.

∙The applications department can "sell" the spare capacity to grid users.

Above all, computing capacities are economized.

Grid

node App 1 App 2 1

Global Zone

System 1

Grid network

Grid

node App 3 App 4 2

Global Zone	Grid node 3
System 2

Grid node 4

Figure 7: [dd] Use case: Grid computing with isolation

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