Instant-Grid

The new Instant-Grid version 1.1 is based on Knoppix 5.1.1. This improves the support for more recent hardware. Furthermore, we have expanded the English documentation (also available online), automated many function tests, and improved the workflow stability. For further changes, please have a look at the release notes.

Click http://instant-grid.de/instant-grid-map.html in order to view the cities of the world from which Instant-Grid has already been downloaded (as far as we could tell from the IP-addresses).

Instant-Grid 1.0 has become available on the occasion of the GES 07. Version 1.0 has a newly designed user interface improving its accessibility for beginners, which is further enhanced by new flash videos showcasing the most important features. Also new is the integration of the graphical workflow manager GWES. Its capabilities are demonstrated by a demo version of ERAMAS, an environmental simulation tool, and by a new POV-Ray renderfarm based on workflows. Furthermore it is possible for the first time to use external resources from Instant-Grid. Doing this requires a D-Grid certificate or a registration on the Instant-Grid web page.

Instant-Grid wird auf der German E-Science Conference 2007 (2. - 4. Mai 2007, Baden-Baden, www.ges2007.de) mit einem Vortrag, einem eigenen Stand und einem Workshop vertreten sein. Während der Vortrag einen Überblick über die CD geben wird, werden auf dem Stand einzelne Komponenten live demonstriert. Zudem können Besucher PC-kompatible Notebooks in ein Instant-Grid integrieren, und so direkt Grid-Software ausprobieren. Dazu muss natürlich keinerlei Software auf der Festplatte installiert werden.

Just in time for Christmas Instant-Grid version 0.6 (Christmas Edition) is released today. In this version we finally support parallel rendering of animations or movies with POV-Ray. Furthermore we have added new applications from our partners: Gridsearch from FIZ Chemie allows searching text documents on all grid clients, and with the Workflow-Manager from Fraunhofer FIRST you can describe complex tasks in an easy way. Have a look at our release notes for further improvements and changes.

A new version of the Instant-Grid CD (0.5) is available! The live CD base is now Knoppix 5, and we have also updated Gridsphere and the Grid Portlets. A new addition is the text editor Gobby, a nice example of collaborative tools (not only) for Grids. Furthermore we have added a new Portlet, which allows examining the Instant-Grid hardware resources directly from Gridsphere (screenshot on the left). There are more changes in version 0.5, please also consult the release notes.

Instant-Grid version 0.4 is available! One of the new features is an easy to use web application for the creation of new users. We also updated almost the entire grid software contained in Instant-Grid with the most recent versions, added firewall protection against unsolicited access, and facilitated usage of Instant-Grid on stand alone systems by making it work with a dummy interface. More changes and bugfixes can be found in the release notes. Happy gridding!

If you want to take a peek at Instant-Grid before (or during) the download of the CD image, or try to sidestep reading the documentation, you may want to have a look at our Flash movies (the page is currently only available in German). They are mostly intended for presentations and therefore do not contain commentary. However, the saying goes "a picture is worth a thousand words".

And now for something completely different: As a side effect of the recent introduction of the Subversion revision control system into our development cycle, we also switched our changelog to use the logging information from that system.

Version 0.3.1 of the Instant-Grid CD, now available for download, doesn't require a manual update of the Gridsphere resource database anymore. All clients in the Instant-Grid can now be used directly and without manual configuration from inside the portal, just like it was previously possible using the command line or the rendering farm web interface.

The new version 0.3 of the Instant-Grid CD is available for download. There have been a lot of changes since version 0.2.1, please have a look at the release notes for a (still incomplete) list.

The most notable new feature is the possibility to use Instant-Grids as render farms for the parallel rendering of single scenes with POV-Ray (multiple scenes and movies are planned). A simple Web interface to this feature is provided. You can use the included examples or render your own scenes. Please note that there is a significant overhead for each picture slice, so parallel speed up increases with higher resolutions.