The WorldGrid transatlantic testbed: a successful example of Grid interoperability across EU and U.S. domains

Abstract

The European DataTAG project has taken a major step towards making the concept of a worldwide computing Grid a reality. In collaboration with the companion U.S. project iVDGL, DataTAG has realized an intercontinental testbed spanning Europe and the U.S. integrating architecturally different Grid implementations based on the Globus toolkit. The WorldGrid testbed has been successfully demonstrated at SuperComputing 2002 and IST2002 where real HEP application jobs were transparently submitted from U.S. and Europe using native mechanisms and run where resources were available, independently of their location. In this paper we describe the architecture of the WorldGrid testbed, the problems encountered and the solutions taken in realizing such a testbed. With our work we present an important step towards interoperability of Grid middleware developed and deployed in Europe and the U.S.. Some of the solutions developed in WorldGrid will be adopted by the LHC Computing Grid first service. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first large-scale testbed that combines middleware components and makes them work together.