The NRW-Metacomputer - building blocks for a worldwide computational grid

Presents the results of the NRW-Metacomputing Taskforce, which has been working on the development of a (German) country-wide metacomputer since 1996. The resulting installation is among the very few that are already operational, have full support for heterogeneous resources, contain a decent security model and feature an advanced scheduling subsystem for the metacomputing environment. The NRW-Metacomputer has been implemented using a modular software architecture. Hence, its concepts and components can be re-used by others without the need to obtain the metacomputing software as a whole. Furthermore, the NRW-Metacomputer already provides well-defined interfaces for linking the system with other metacomputing environments to form a truly global computational grid. Distinctive features of this system are its highly scalable and fault-tolerant software architecture, its advanced resource planning mechanisms, as well as an integration into a DCE (Distributed Computing Environment)/DFS (Distributed File System) environment.