Building a virtual machine-room - a focal point in metacomputing

Computing resources which are transparently available to the user via networked environments are commonly called a metacomputer. In this sense, a metacomputer is a network of heterogeneous, computational resources linked by software in such a way that they can be used as easily as a single computational unit. During the last few years our work has been concentrated on developing methods and tools to provide a transparent and vendor independent hardware management system to the users. Solving this problem up to a high abstraction level will bring the idea of metacomputing a large step closer to its fruition. After reviewing the metacomputing approaches in Europe and the States, we will break down the task force into almost independent units. One of these, the resource access and allocation problem, the project Computing Center Software was focused on. This paper takes a closer look at CCS. Its underlying model which uses abstract views for specifying system components and the general purpose Resource Description Language will be sketched. We will explain how it is possible to support Wide-Area Network access and unstable connection lines. Afterwards, we will present the system and vendor independent batch processing facility usable for arbitrary programming environments. On-going activities and an enhancement of the CCS methodology to solve a core problem in wide-area metacomputing will conclude this paper.