Thebes

Connecting the various players in any inter-process communications require that the processes be able to:

• Discover each other
• Authenticate themselves
• Evaluate authentication to make authorization decisions based upon policies.

This is the glue that connects resources; authentication, authorization, and discovery. Solving these problems in a scalable manner allows the creation of broadly distributed trustworthy systems capable of sharing any sort of resources.

However, scalability has been lacking to date. The Thebes project was created initially to solve these problems in the grid and high performance computing arena. Grid computing died primarily because no one was able to accomplish scalable solutions to these problems. Now the magic word is cloud computing. Unfortunately, the use cases that brought about interest in grids still remain unsolved, and carry over to cloud computing.

Thebes has expanded in scope to include any problem where security and discovery middleware is relevant. Project completion will facilitate the eventual construction a global general-purpose infrastructure by enabling connections between existing diverse users and critical resources. New middleware eases the burden on resource owners by divesting them of knowledge of specific user organization memberships, thus improving grid security and particularly scalability, encouraging resource contributions.

Widespread adoption will ease access to a vast aggregate of diverse resources for users with widely differing levels of expertise. Decentralizing databases will ease the burden on system owners, encouraging them to make resources available while maintaining the highest degree of data accuracy. By connecting users to and across existing grids and to new installations, regardless of the underlying technology or size this middleware should benefit existing projects. A

Philosophically, the Thebes Consortium believes the following statements are true and must be considered when designing a new grid infrastructure:

• With some exceptions, resource owners generally do not care about the identities of the user.
• Resource owners should not require advanced, or pre-negotiated knowledge of remote users.
• Every resource must be able to enforce policy.
• Resource owners must be protected from execution of dangerous applications.
• Every resource must be able to track usage.
• Users prefer there be no distinction between local and grid resources in their ease of use.
• Users seldom care where their job is executing.
• Users should have automatic access to all resources whose policies they satisfy.

Membership gives you the option to post comments and add content.

Arnie Miles