Porting Computation and Data Intensive Applications to Distributed Computing Infrastructures Incorporating Desktop Grids1

Distributed Computing Infrastructures (DCIs) are widely utilised by scientists to support computation and data intensive application scenarios. The European EDGI project is working on connecting two distinctive types of DCIs, Service and Desktop Grid systems. The infrastructure is operated at production level and supports a large variety of applications. Porting and deploying an application on such combined platform raises specific challenges. This paper summarises the experiences that were gained during the porting and migration of over 30 applications to the EDGI combined service grid/desktop grid (SG/DG) platform. Computation and data intensive application scenarios are analysed, and tools and solutions are suggested to address specific requirements of application porting to a DCI that is extended with local or volunteer desktop grid resources