Combining BOINC with Grids and clusters

HTCondor

Run BOINC as ​backfill on HTCondor installations.

SZTAKI Desktop Grid

The SZTAKI Institute has developed ​a number of tools for integrating Grids and BOINC projects.

CluBORun

​CluBORun (Cluster for BOINC Run) is aimed at utilizing idle resources of computing clusters in volunteer computing projects based on BOINC. The key feature of CluBORun is that it utilizes only idle resources of computing clusters (just as the BOINC client does for computers) and uses only ordinary cluster’s user rights. When tasks from another user appear in a cluster queue, CluBORun stops BOINC tasks in queue if new tasks can be launched on freed resources.

Other examples

• Researchers are CERN set up a system where submitted jobs are sent either to a BOINC project or to a GRAM job manager. They developed two utilities, kill_wu and poll_wu, to support this. They are in the boinc/tools directory. Contact Christian Søttrup (chrulle at fatbat.dk) for more info.

• The ​Lattice project from the University of Maryland has developed a Grid system that integrates Globus, BOINC, and several other software components.

• The ​SuperLink project from Technion University developed a system that dynamically assigns jobs to a central server, a local cluster, the EGEE grid, or a BOINC project, based on their estimated runtime.

• The ​MindModeling@Home project has incorporated two United States Air Force Department of Defense LSF clusters and an additional Beowulf cluster in their beta project. Tools to facilitate this included: LSF submission scripts, control scripts to dynamically clean up potentially reschedule clients upon node time out and a multiple BOINC instance installer.

• The ​SZTAKI desktop grid project allows hierarchical organizations to share resources in a way that reflects the hierarchy.