**4.3 General services toward interoperability: Milu software and Gridway installation**

GARUDA and gLite users are using different method to access and use resources belonging to the two different infrastructure. To avoid this burden and to make the usage of both infrastructures as simple as possible the MILU tool, originally conceived as a portable gLite User Interface, was further developed and enhanced in collaboration with eLab .

Miramare Interoperable Lite User interface (MILU) is now a software tool which allows seamless usage of different grid infrastructures from the same Linux workstation.

MILU is a repackaging of the user-interface software provided by gLite, ARC and the Globus Toolkit (version 4), providing access to the functionality of all three middlewares concurrently. Extensive testing and an ingenious use of UNIX tricks allow MILU binaries to run on a large variety of Linux distributions (CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu, etc.), including some that are not supported by the original upstream middleware packages. MILU is packaged as a single archive that users can extract and install into their home directories by running a single shell script; no super-user privileges or technicalities are needed. MILU is distributed with a configuration ready for use for several VOs; new configurations can be added by the users (and we encourage submission upstream, so that more people can benefit from prepackaged configuration).

MILU is already in use by the EU-IndiaGrid and the e-NMR VOs, plus other groups of local grid users.

We think that MILU could be interesting to community developers, in addition to nontechnical users, who have been historically the target audience of MILU. Indeed, MILU can be the ideal tool for quickly enabling Grid client access on a Linux machine, for the purpose of rapid prototyping a new tool, or for deploying test/debug instances of running services.

294 Grid Computing – Technology and Applications, Widespread Coverage and New Horizons

The development of this tool, coordinated by CNR/IOM laboratory for e-science (eLab) continued after the closing of the first project and was quite active also during the EUIndiaGRID2 project. This tool was used in several ICTP training events and in the entire official training events of the projects. Gridseed is now an open laboratory where interoperability solutions and ideas are tested and experimented jointly by European and Indian partners (Amarnath, 2010). Version 1.6.2 was released in December 2010. This latest version includes not only gLite services but also Globus/GARUDA Services allowing setup a portable and interoperable environment between the two Grid infrastructures of the

GRIDSEED provides a simple tool to setup a portable and interoperable Grid infrastructure based on virtual machines. The GRIDSEED tool was originally developed to easily deploy a training gLite Grid infrastructure almost everywhere in the world with a set of machines (simple PC's) locally connected among them as the only requirement. It uses standard virtualization tools (VirtualBox and/or VMmare) easily and widely available. Recently the virtual environment is enriched with other different middleware (Arc and Globus Toolkit) to make it the first virtual training laboratory for interoperability and interoperation among different middleware. GRIDSEED is therefore a complete training environment formed by a virtual infrastructure complemented by some demo applications and training materials ready to be used both in standard training events and advanced interoperation demo/events session.

**4.3 General services toward interoperability: Milu software and Gridway installation**  GARUDA and gLite users are using different method to access and use resources belonging to the two different infrastructure. To avoid this burden and to make the usage of both infrastructures as simple as possible the MILU tool, originally conceived as a portable gLite

Miramare Interoperable Lite User interface (MILU) is now a software tool which allows

MILU is a repackaging of the user-interface software provided by gLite, ARC and the Globus Toolkit (version 4), providing access to the functionality of all three middlewares concurrently. Extensive testing and an ingenious use of UNIX tricks allow MILU binaries to run on a large variety of Linux distributions (CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu, etc.), including some that are not supported by the original upstream middleware packages. MILU is packaged as a single archive that users can extract and install into their home directories by running a single shell script; no super-user privileges or technicalities are needed. MILU is distributed with a configuration ready for use for several VOs; new configurations can be added by the users (and we encourage submission upstream, so that more people can benefit from pre-

MILU is already in use by the EU-IndiaGrid and the e-NMR VOs, plus other groups of local

We think that MILU could be interesting to community developers, in addition to nontechnical users, who have been historically the target audience of MILU. Indeed, MILU can be the ideal tool for quickly enabling Grid client access on a Linux machine, for the purpose of rapid prototyping a new tool, or for deploying test/debug instances of running services.

User Interface, was further developed and enhanced in collaboration with eLab .

seamless usage of different grid infrastructures from the same Linux workstation.

packaged configuration).

grid users.

project. Components of GRIDSEED were downloaded more than 2000 times so far.

We believe that MILU, possibly extended in the future to include the EMI "unified client" to be, can have an impact for the users and developers belonging to emerging communities, as a lower-level tool upon which more sophisticated Grid access mechanisms can be built. There is a clear need for a tool like MILU:


Milu 1.1 is now distributed with Gridway middleware bundled together and properly configured to access both GARUDA and gLite infrastructure. User communities have therefore at disposal a simple and efficient interoperability tool to use both infrastructures at the same time. Milu was downloaded more that 2500 times so far.

(see http://eforge.escience-lab.org/gf/project/milu/)
