[Beowulf] Web interfaces for yer cluster.

[Jeffrey B. Layton]

andrew holway wrote:
> Hi
>
> Been lurking round some user group meetings and have found academic
> cluster people needing a way to attract Unix illiterate people onto
> their systems. There has been a suggestion that a web based user
> portal might be a way to go. I have been told that there may have been
> similar projects with this kind of thing in mind.
>
> I was thinking of a way to bolt in modules for the portal depending on
> what codes you wanted to run.
>   
Sigh... This is my "dream" of a sorts. I want a web base tool for
submitting jobs, monitoring jobs, and so on, so that people who
don't know or care to learn the command line, can run jobs (there
is a group of this niche that aren't capable of learning the command
line anyway).

I want a simple interface where the user just selects the code they
want to run, how many processors they want (alternatively you
could even ask how long you want the code to run), where the
input files are located, and where you want the output files to be
located. Then they hit enter and the code runs. However, this will
take some set up by and admin to define the actual command line
to run the code, copying the data files (if needed), etc. So this means
that you can't do it for every code - only the ones defined by the
admin.

PBS, Cluster Resources, and LSF all have some type of web portal
where you can do some of these things. Of course they are commercial
and sometimes not always the most flexible.

Joe Landman at Scalable Informatics has mentioned a project he's
working on called Dragonfly that may give you what you want.
(Shameless plug for Joe - I'm lining my beers at SC07 already).

Jeff