Combining BOINC with Grids and clusters

It's possible to add a BOINC-based back end to an existing grid-computing front end.

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.

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 Einstein@OSG project for LIGO at Caltech (http://www.opensciencegrid.org/Case_Study_-_Einstein_at_OSG). Initially developed at the AEI in Germany, our project enables BOINC to be executed in Grid Environments through Condor-G, Globus GRAM as well as GRAM-WS. In particular we are using ~40 grid resources on the Open Science Grid (http://www.opensciencegrid.org/) and ~20 grid resources on D-Grid (http://www.d-grid-gmbh.de/index.php?id=56&L=1) to contribute approx. 150,000 cpu hours daily to the Einstein@Home project since 2008.
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.

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