General Description

The Computing Element (CE) is a set of gLite services that provide access for Grid jobs to a local resource management system (LRMS, batch system) running on a computer farm, or possibly to computing resources local to the CE host. Typically the CE provides access to a set of job queues within the LRMS.

Utilization Period

The CE service is designed to run 24 hours a day on 7 days a week.

Booking Conditions

No particular booking is required to use this service. However, the user MUST have a valid grid certificate of an accepted Certificate Authority and MUST be member of a valid Virtual Organization (VO). The service is initiated by respective commands that can be submitted from any gLite User Interface either interactively or through batch submission. To run a job on the cluster the user must install an own or at least have access to a gLite User Interface. Certificates can be requested for example at the German Grid Certificate Authority (CA) https://gridka-ca.kit.edu .

Deregistration

No particular deregistration is required for this service. A user with an expired Grid certificate or VO membership is automatically blocked from accessing the CE.

IT-Security

The database and log files of the CEs contain information on the status and results of the jobs and the certificate that was used to initiate the task. The required data files themselves are stored on the worker nodes or in the Grid Storage Elements (SEs). No other personal data is stored.

Technical requirements

To run a job at the Grid cluster of the Scientific Computing Center (SCC) the user needs

• A valid Grid user certificate
• Membership in a Virtual Organization (VO)
• An own or at least access to a User Interface