This tutorial marks the first of a series of tutorials that will teach you the mechanics of a grid and how to develop a grid using Python as your supporting language. At the end of the series, you should have a good idea both of the technicalities surrounding grid development, but also a complete API in Python for building your own grid applications.

Grid components need to talk to each other. The distributor needs to talk to the grid providers, the providers need to talk back, and clients and management tools need to talk to the distributor and providers. Providers may need to talk to each other, or they may need to look up information from another machine to determine information or status information from the grid. In this tutorial we look at ways to handle communication in a Python grid framework, from the basics of the TCP/IP system to the simplified, externally managed e-mail solution.

This tutorial marks the first of a series of tutorials that will teach you the mechanics of a grid and how to develop a grid using Python as your supporting language. At the end of the series, you should have a good idea both of the technicalities surrounding grid development, but also a complete API in Python for building your own grid applications.

This tutorial teaches the basics of a grid design and how different components of the Python language can be used to support the design through its various stages. As the first part of a series of tutorials on building grids with Python, the purpose of this tutorial is to demonstrate the basic grid structure and the functionality provided within Python to support these basic components. By the end of this tutorial, you should have gained an understanding of how a grid operates and the primary methods available within Python that can support it.

A forward proxy server provides Internet access for any number of clients via a single server. Benefits of such a set up include additional security, and caching and filtering capabilities. Learn how to configure your Apache server to accomplish these tasks.

Grids rely on a number of core services to operate, including methods of communication, exchanging data, executing remote applications and even monitoring the systems on which you are executing your grid. The easiest way to provide power and flexibility to your grid is to standardize on the way you access and use these services. One such toolkit is available from the Grid Research and Innovation Laboratory at the San Diego Computer Center and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California in San Diego.

The systems they provide are split into a number of toolkits and they've made a series of Python Extensions to the Grid (PEG) to make them accessible from within your Python grid applications. In this tutorial I look at each toolkit, how to build it and how to build the Python interface to it. We also take a look at the internals of each kit, how to use them and build some basic Python applications to help demonstrate how they can be used.

Building grid applications can be complicated - there are so many different aspects and components to the system that it's impossible to simply leap in the process. However, there are toolkits out ther and available that can help you. The most mature and best known of these grid toolkits is the Globus Toolkit. But usig the toolkit can be complex, so using a nice, easy to use language like Python can make the process significantly easier.

In this tutorial I start with the basics of the Globus system and show how to build the Globus kit, the Python interface, and and how to use the interface to build basic Python grid servbices and applications.

Grid services are undergoing a veritable explosion of growth at the moment. But how do you choose a grid solution? Do you look for standards, Web services compatibility, development environment compatibility, or just marketing hype? With so much conflicting information out there on grid services and platforms, it can be difficult to identify whether a specific company is providing a service or a toolkit for building your own service. In this article I'm going to look at the various grid development platforms available, and some grid initiatives and companies that provide ready-to-run grid services.

One of the problems with distributing work around a group of machines is that it can become difficult to track the distribution of work, which can lead to problems with bandwidth. This doesn't mean bandwidth in terms of network performance, although that can be an issue, but in terms of the distribution of work to clients and providers, the overall bandwidth performance of the grid, how work is distributed, and the servers that handle the distribution. In this article I look at how to get the best performance out of your grid.

If you are serving professional websites you're probably using one of the two most popular web serving platforms out there - either IIS or Apache. Are you sure you made the right choice? If you are planning a new web site, have you chosen a web serving platform?

In this article over on ServerWatch I take a look at the two web platforms, whilst trying to keep a level head on the issue of which is 'the best'.

Two of the hottest technologies at the moment are Grid computing and Web services, but are the two compatible? In this article, I look at how the two systems are actually very compatible and describe the benefits of using Web services in grid applications.

Grid Computing has come a long way since the early days, but to move forward and become a more effective environment for solving the computing power and resourcing needs of companies we need to have a standardized way of developing, supporting, providing, publishing and working with grid components.

That's what this article is all about - the standardization of the grid computing platform, how things have worked in the past, how they work now and how standards are driving the new grid environments through the Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA), the Open Grid Services Infrastructure (OGSI) and the first implementation of the standards, the Globus toolkit.

If you manage a number of Apache servers then you'll already be aware of the issues surrounding compiling and installing Apache. If you use third party modules, you'll also know how vital it is to make sure that everything is working. But how do you test the configuration and modules within Apache withou a lot of manual and time-consuming testing?

The HTTPD-Test system comes with a Perl Framework specially designed to do just this. You can use it to verify your Apache installation and to ensure that when your system and environment changes that your existing Apache installation still works.

So you've set up your server and users are accessing your Web site; the last thing you want are performance problems with the site. If only you could have tested for them before going live. With the Flood component of the Apache HTTP Project's HTTPD-Test (so named because it floods an HTTP server with requests to test its response times) you can. In this article I look at how to install, configure and run tests with Flood, and how to turn Flood results into information about configuration and performance issues with your server.

Looking to add Java functionality to your Apache Web server? The tool of choice from the Apache Foundation is the Tomcat Java server. But did you know you can combine Apache and Tomcat? In this article I look how to install and configure Tomcat to work with your Apache server.

WebDAV -- Distributed Authoring and Versioning -- is turning into an important tool on Apache-based servers. WebDAV allows users to colloborate and contribute articles and content to your web server in a secure and efficient way, without requiring special content management systems or complex security environments. In this article I show you how to enable WebDAV on your Apache server and offer services like Apple's iCal to your users.

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