Techila Grid

Techila Distributed Computing Engine
Developer(s) Techila Technologies Ltd
Operating system Windows, Linux
Type distributed computing, middleware
License Proprietary
Website www.techilatechnologies.com

Techila Distributed Computing Engine (earlier known as Techila Grid) is a commercial distributed computing middleware and management solution. It provides scalable performance to applications by enabling scalability across computing resources. The solution creates a computing service and execution environment, which is self-managing, based on autonomic computing. Techila Distributed Computing Engine is developed and licensed by Techila Technologies Ltd, a privately held company headquartered in Tampere, Finland. The solution is also available as an on-demand solution in Google Cloud Launcher, the online marketplace created and operated by Google. According to IDC,[1] the solution enables organizations to create HPC infrastructure without the major capital investments and operating expenses required by new HPC hardware.

Product features

Techila Distributed Computing Engine is a distributed computing middleware and management solution, which can be used to access and manage IT resources for various high-performance computing (HPC) computing uses, including high-throughput computing (HTC) scenarios.

The Techila Distributed Computing Engine technology is built on a patented autonomic computing architecture. The architecture has enabled features such as life-cycle management, self-configuration and self-healing, which simplify the deployment and operation of large-scale distributed computing systems. The basic idea of Techila Distributed Computing Engine is to create a scalable computing service and execution environment for applications with a workload, which can benefit of scalable distributed computing. Common examples of workloads that are ready for distributed computing are embarrassingly parallel problems, such as parametric sweeps and simulations using Monte Carlo methods.

Techila Distributed Computing Engine does not set limitations to the physical location of computing resources used. The Product Description]of Techila Distributed Computing Engine lists three supported infrastructure designs:

The Techila Distributed Computing Engine technology started initially from the vision of grid computing and enablement of fast simulation and analysis without the complexity of traditional high-performance computing. The product has evolved to a full stack solution that includes

Techila Distributed Computing Engine has also an open application programming interface for applications developed by independent software vendors and systems Integrators. Techila Technologies offers also tools that enable automated provisioning and integration of cloud-based resources.

Techila Distributed Computing Engine was demonstrated by a research team at the University of Helsinki in 2011 as being capable of providing autonomic management to computing environments of large numbers of Windows Azure cloud instances. The University of Helsinki has also demonstrated Techila Distributed Computing Engine's ability to enhance the usability and utilization of large-scale cluster resources in projects implemented using MATLAB, R, Python, Java, and C/ C++/ C#.

In a Techila Distributed Computing Engine system, computational resources can be arranged into device groups for organizational, security, and administrative control. Despite its performance in large-scale systems such as CSC - IT Center For Science, it is also suitable for smaller environments such as the TUTGrid which utilizes the idle capacity of desktop PCs and other computers at Tampere University of Technology (TUT) for scientific computing.

The security of Techila Distributed Computing Engine was evaluated by Nixu Ltd in 2008. Nixu is Finland's largest specialist company in information security consulting, many global corporates as customers. After this, Techila Distributed Computing Engine has been accepted by security-sensitive industry sectors, such as Finance and Insurance, Manufacturing and Pharmaceutical.

Techila Server

Techila Server is a Java-based software product, which optimizes the performance of a Techila Distributed Computing Engine environment and jobs in it. The optimization done by Techila Server supports not only large jobs, but also makes the system suitable for running small computational jobs. The performance of Techila Distributed Computing Engine in different scenarios was evaluated in a thesis at Tampere University of Technology.[2]

Originally, the Techila Server was delivered as an embedded appliance. The embedded appliance product was discontinued in 2012. Currently, Techila Server is delivered either as a VMware virtual appliance or using cloud-specific deployment tools.

Techila Worker

Techila Worker is the software agent middleware that must be installed on each computer that will participate in a Techila Distributed Computing Engine environment. The computers can be physical or virtualized computers running on a hypervisor or in cloud. Techila Distributed Computing Engine supports following public cloud services: Microsoft Azure, Amazon EC2 (Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud) and Google Compute Engine. Once Techila Worker is installed on a computer, it will authenticate the computer to the Techila Server using a certificate, and automatically configures itself to run the jobs received from the Techila Server.

Techila Worker is a Java-based client middleware component, which can be run on Microsoft Windows or Linux. This enables client computers participating in the Techila Distributed Computing Engine system to be based on virtually any hardware platform or software platform. Techila Worker software runs on the lowest possible priority on the local computer. Techila Worker is also interoperable with batch-queuing systems, like the SLURM, TORQUE, or Oracle Grid Engine (previously known as Sun Grid Engine, SGE). This interoperability allows existing HPC users to use their existing infrastructures as a part of a Techila Distributed Computing Engine system.

Administrator User Interface

A web-based Administrator User Interface provides administrators with a simplified and easy-to-use interface to the Techila Server. The Administrator User Interface allows monitoring system activity, view and control job execution, execution policy, monitor and control Techila Workers and Techila Worker Groups, control security settings, and manage users.

Techila SDK

Techila SDK (earlier known as Techila Grid Management Kit or Techila GMK) is a library of software components that integrate applications into the Techila Distributed Computing Engine environment. The SDK includes application programming interfaces to many commonly used research and development tools, such as MATLAB, R, Python, Perl, Java, .NET C/ C++, FORTRAN, and Command-line interface script. The applications developed using the Techila SDK can also be deployed and run as service in a SOA environment. Techila SDK supports both Windows and Linux operating systems.

References

  1. ↑ Wu, Jie (2010). The Rise of Grid-Based High-Performance Computing: A Cost-Effective Approach to HPC Acquisition. IDC. p. 7.
  2. ↑ Koskinen, Marko (2010). Evaluating the performance of job management systems in different distributed computing environments (PDF). Tampere University of Technology. p. 63.
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