Open Source Grid Computing in the Finance Industry

Alex EfimovSTFC Kite Club

Knowledge Exchange AdvisorUK CERN Technology Transfer Officer

Alex.efimov@stfc.ac.uk+44 (0)1223 422405

• The STFC was formed on 1 April 2007 by the merger of the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) and the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC)

• It is one of seven national research councils in the UK.• Annual budget is around £600m:

– funds the best research within in particle physics, astronomy, nuclear physics and space science;

– enables the research community to have access to the best facilities in the world;

– increases the UK technology capability, engagement with industry and knowledge transfer.

STFC Introduction

• High costs of establishing a partnership• Asymmetric information flows• Differences between scientific and business cultures• Insufficient level of market level readiness• Lack of skills and experience

• Equity gap

STFC helps to overcome the following problems

gLite Commercialisation Project

Constellation Technologies Ltd

• Constellation Technologies Ltd, registered in October 2007 in the UK

• A spin-off company from STFC• Based at Rutherford Appleton

Laboratory (RAL)• Develops and distributes the

computer virtualization solutions based on gLite Grid middleware

• Employs IT experts from CERN and UK universities

• Contact: Nick Trigg, N.P.Trigg@rl.ac.uk, CLIK/RAL

• Constellation Technologies, Ltd. will provide following commercial services:

• Commercial technical support and training

• Develop and distribute commercial enterprise and global solutions based on the gLite middleware

• Technical consultancy to software vendors and end-users

• Build commercial e-Infrastructure based on gLite and offer it on pay-as-you-use basis (Utility Computing Model)

Grid in Finance: Current Status

• Vast majority of large financial institutions use Grid

• The largest share of the market (around 75%) DataSynapse and Platform

• Open source presence (Condor) is negligible

Proprietary vendors know better what customers in the financial industry need

Grid in Finance

Infrastructure Level

• Reducing overheads

• Improving manageability

• Planning and flexibility

Application Level

• Risk Management

• Portfolio Management

• Derivatives Pricing

• Transactional activities

Facing New Challenges

• Complexity of modern IT infrastructures: physical servers, virtual machines, clusters, Grids, geographical distribution

• Cost of electricity• Credit crunch

• Further pressures to reduce costs• Openness to the acceptable security

concept

Case Studies

Bank 1 • Around 30k

computers in more than 10 data centres

• Decentralised IT: resources belong to departments

• Use DataSynapse: more than 200 Grids

• Want to try virtualisation

Bank 2• Around 20k

computers in 9 data centres

• Centralised IT: all users are on hard SLAs

• Use Platform and Condor

• Little or no interest in virtualisation

Finding Solutions

• Improving utilisation rates through market based algorithms for resource allocation

• Accessing external infrastructures on-demand

• Using a single management platform for all computing resources

• Opportunity for gLite

gLite for Finance

• Grant Reference: ST/G000263/1

• Principal Investigator: Dr Neil Geddes, STFC (RAL)

• Project Title: Industrial research to integrate gLite (Grid software) into a platform for the commercial trading of computer resources

• Funds Awarded: £198,791.11

Improving Utilization

Hardware Servers: (-) low utilisation rates, scalability problems

Uti

lisati

on

Virtual Servers: (+) improved utilisation rates, better scalability, easy disaster recovery(-) increased number of servers to manage, incompatible virtualization platforms

Enterprise/Departmental Grid:(+) improves utilisation rates of physical servers, enables collaboration(-) limited scalability, lack of interoperability between vendors, limited efficiency of policy based mechanisms

100%

0%

Grid

Cloud Computing:(+) no need to own hardware, shared access, improved utilisation through pay-as-you-use(-) incompatible platforms, ‘fair price’ is dubious to users

gLite Architecture for Finance

File CatalogueFile Catalogue

Logging &Logging &Book-keepingBook-keeping

ResourceResourceBrokerBroker

StorageStorageResourceResource

ComputingComputingResource Resource

Information Information ServiceService

Job Status

Datasets info

Author.&Authen.

Job S

ub

mit

Even

t

Job

Qu

ery

Job

Stat

us

Input files

Input

Output

Output files

Pu

blis

h

Resource info

User/Grid User/Grid interfaceinterface

Demand OfferVRM

Competition

HardwareOperatingSystem

Virtualisation

EnterpriseGrid

EnterpriseCloud

Cloud

ConstellationTechnologies

Incompatible Standards

Creates pools

of resources

Higher

utilisation

rates

Incompatible Standards

Interfaces

Interfaces and Market Mechanisms

Key differentiators:• Open source – no vendor lock-in• Scalability

PIPSS Features

• Maximum STFC contribution: £125k per year• Maximum project duration: 3 years• Calls: quarterly

• Maximum STFC contribution : £110k per year• Maximum project duration: 12 months• Calls: applications may be made at any time

Mini-PIPSS Features

STFC Funding for Partnerships

Technology Transfer

• How to get involved:– Apply for Mini-PIPSS and PIPSS grant– Consultancy projects with industry– Constellation Technology Ltd is looking for

people with gLite knowledge and programming skills