# Welcome to the Grid Engine Portal Home Page

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The Grid Engine Portal (GEP, formerly known as Sun Technical Computing Portal - TCP) project provides a Java based capability for enabling highly secure internet access to applications that run on an existing Grid Engine grid.
Users authenticate to a portal interface from anywhere on the internet via a browser and can then:

- Securely access and execute applications via a transparent interface to Grid Engine
- Monitor the status of jobs running in Grid Engine
- Securely upload input files to the Portal Server with the click of a button
- Securely download output files to a local workstation with the click of a button
- View X-windows based applications using VNC

Administrators can also remotely access the portal and perform administrative functions such as:

- Registering applications for use with the GEP in a matter of minutes
- Quickly building HTML interfaces to applications using templates that prompt users for input
- Monitoring Grid Engine usage and statistics

In most cases this can be done without any modification of the existing application !
Furthermore, since applications can be executable scripts (and HTML interfaces can be easily built for scripts) this provides an efficient mechanism for handling complex job streams.
Since the variety of uses for such a capability are numerous, GEP offers some basic features that many user communities have found beneficial. The source code was designed with the idea of making it available to the user community for further enhancements and capabilities.
The Grid Engine Portal currently relies on GE as well as the SunONE Portal Server for its functionality although both are loosely coupled within the Grid Engine Portal source code.

## Grid Engine Portal Components and Installation Overview

The Grid Engine Portal comprises three components:

- Grid Engine
- SunONE Portal Server
- Grid Engine Portal servlets

To enable window based applications through the portal the additional installation of VNC or Tarantella can be added.

1. Grid Engine
   The Grid Engine Portal installation requires that an existing (S)GE (version 5.3p2 or later) or (S)GEEE grid has been set up. Details on setting up (S)GE(EE) can be found on the websites mentioned in the table below.
   It is recommended that those unfamiliar with grid technology begin by taking the online Sun ONE Grid Technology Overview class. Administrators may also wish to take the SunONE Grid Engine web-based training.
2. SunONE Portal Server
   The next step is the installation of SunONE Portal Server (version 6 or later).
   Note: there is also a Grid Engine Portal version available for version iPlanet Portal Server 3.0SP2 (or later) although it is recommended that users who do not have an existing Portal installation begin with version 6.
   A trial/development package is included with the Solaris 9 disks. It can also be downloaded form the link mentioned in the table below. Sites that require remote visualization capabilities should download and install the Secure Remote Access package as part of this installation for Netlet support. For detailed installation instructions consult the Grid Engine Portal Installation Guide. This guide should be read before beginning in the Portal Server installation.
3. Grid Engine Portal servlets
   After fetching and unpacking the Grid Engine Portal server package the included install script has to be executed. This is outlined in detail in the Grid Engine Portal Installation Guide. The package for either iPS 3.0 or S1PS 6.0 can be found in the table below.
4. VNC
   Optionally VNC can be installed to enable portal access of graphical applications. See the links below.

The final step is to customize the portal, install your applications, and build simple html interfaces based on the provided templates.

## Important Links

Grid Engine | Sun Grid Engine Sun Grid Engine training Grid Engine Open Source Project
SunONE Portal Server | SunONE Portal Server SunONE Portal Server Documentation SunONE Portal Server 3, formerly iPlanet Portal Server

Grid Engine Portal

Packages:
Grid Engine Portal packages S1PS 6.0

> (Grid Engine Portal packages iPS 3.0)

Documentation:
Grid Engine Portal Installation Guide S1PS 6.0

> (Grid Engine Portal Installation Guide iPS 3.0)

Grid Engine Portal Whitepaper

Graphical Application Support

VNC has been used to make graphical applications available through
the portal. This integration is outlined in the installation guide and
additional README files.
Commercial packages such as Tarantella are also available for
displaying graphics and interactive applications from multiple
platforms in a browser. There is an integration effort with S1PS 6
underway. For iPS 3 a integration is already available. Additional
information can be found at Tarantella's Homepage .

For discussions and community building Grid Engine Portal mailing list has been setup. To subscribe/unsusbscribe go to the Grid Engine Mailing Lists page. | gep@gridengine.sunsource.net
Problem reports, enhancement requests and community decisions can be tracked for Grid Engine Portal in the GEP subcomponent of Grid Engine Issue Tracking. To be able to enter your own issues it is necessary to register in the Grid Engine project as an Observer. | Grid Engine Issue Tracking

Registering for the Grid Engine (Portal) project is a two phase process.

- Register as a member of sunsource.net
- Join the Grid Engine project

Register as member of sunsource.net
Join the Grid Engine project

The Grid Engine Portal source distribution can be retrieved via cvs. For general questions concerning the use of cvs, ssh tunneling and the collaborative environment this sections might be helpful. | Working in the Grid Engine Project Part 1 Download Source