GridIIT and the OSG provide common services for available shared computing resources using high-throughput computation (HTC). GridIIT was designed to assist fellow university researchers by enabling the opportunistic usage and sharing of computing resources. Illinois Tech also joined the Open Science Grid (OSG) to expand the scope of available, shared computing resources among the university’s research community. GridIIT and OSG are primarily used as high-throughput grids in which research jobs are broken down into a very large number of individual jobs that can run independently. The most successful opportunistic applications that run on GridIIT and OSG have the following characteristics:
- The application is a Linux application for the x86 or x86_64 architecture;
- The application has a single CPU utilization and does not required MPI;
- The application has a short runtime of up to 24 hours;
- The application can handle being unexpectedly stopped and restarted;
- The application is built from software that does not require a license; and
- The research being done is a workflow consisting of a very large number of small jobs rather than a few large jobs.
Please Note: Neither GridIIT or the OSG provide any permanent data storage. All files older than 14 days will be removed from the user’s home directory.