Walden A Scalable Solution for Grid Account Management

• Published in: Fifth IEEE/ACM International Workshop on Grid Computing pp. 102 - 109
• Main Authors: Kirschner, Beth A., Hacker, Thomas J., Adamson, William A., Athey, Brian D.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC, USA IEEE Computer Society 08-11-2004; IEEE
• Series: ACM Conferences
• Subjects: Authentication; Authorization; Grid computing; High performance computing; Identity management systems; Packaging; Research and development management; Resource management; Scalability; Security; Security and privacy; Security and privacy > Security services; Security and privacy > Security services > Authentication; Software and its engineering; Software and its engineering > Software organization and properties; Software and its engineering > Software organization and properties > Software system structures; Software and its engineering > Software organization and properties > Software system structures > Distributed systems organizing principles; Software and its engineering > Software organization and properties > Software system structures > Distributed systems organizing principles > Organizing principles for web applications
• ISBN: 0769522564; 9780769522562
• ISSN: 1550-5510; 2377-6374
• DOI: 10.1109/GRID.2004.66

A large and diverse consortium of grid clusters, as can be found in a university setting, requires a flexible authorization model that is scalable, extensible and easy to administer. Current approaches to grid authorization suffer from administrative interfaces that don't scale, authorization models that don't provide needed functionality, or both. This paper proposes a solution with initial implementation that uses existing standards to support the requirements of such a consortium of grid clusters. Our solution eliminates the need to manage authentication and authorization on a per-host basis, and implements a mechanism to temporarily bind a grid user to a local guest account on grid resource.