Wide-Area Computing: Resource Sharing on a Large Scale

abstract over a complex set of resources and provide a high-level way to share and manage them over the network. To be effective, such a system must address the challenges posed by real end-user applications (see the sidebar "Challenges for a Wide-Area Operating System"). Scalability, security, and fault tolerance are just a few of the characteristics a viable solution must have. Five years ago, we set out to design and build a wide-area operating system that would encompass all these challenges, allowing multiple organizations with diverse platforms to share and combine their resources. Our system, Legion (http://legion.virginia.edu), is now operational on hundreds of hosts across nine US sites, including the two NSF supercomputer centers (San Diego Supercomputer Center and National Center for Supercomputing Applications), two DoD supercomputer centers (Naval Oceanographic Office and Army ComputingPractices Computing over wide-area networks has been largely ad hoc, but as ne...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 1999
• Where: COMPUTER
• Authors: Andrew S. Grimshaw, Adam Ferrari, Frederick Knabe, Marty Humphrey
• Keywords: COMPUTER 1999, Operating System, Wide-area Operating, Wide-Area Operating System