Refreshing The Real Time Monitor
Mon 14 Jun 2010
The GridPP/Imperial College developed Real Time Monitor has undergone another overhaul and is now available in different versions, supporting a greater number platforms, is more stable and has a new website.
Back in 2003 the first Real Time Monitor was launched allowing people to see grid jobs moving across the globe as they were sent by users. Since then there have been a few visual changes including the infamous pizza boxes. Having settled on a 3D globe in late 2006 the RTM has kept that basic idea but slowly improved the interface and the underlying code.
The team at Imperial College London have made some real improvements to the code in the last year. One of the issues with previous versions of the RTM has been compatibility with different hardware and operating systems. This has been solved and the RTM now runs on Windows (XP and later), Mac OSX 10.5+ and Linux (see website for details).
There has also been one major shift in the deployment of the RTM. Up until now the recommended and stable version of the application has been the stand alone and installed program. Now there is a new Java webstart which makes running it far simpler and no need to have it installed on the machine you are using. This is now the recommended way to run and use the RTM. A smaller change is that all of the various ways of running the RTM now don't take up the whole screen but either appear in a separate window or in a new browser tab, making it easier to have it running in advance and display when needed.
The team is constantly looking to improve the RTM with both minor code changes and major new additions to the application. In the near future is greater integration with the GridGuide, extra aspects of the grid being included on the visualisation and wider compatibility with more operating systems.
The Real Time Monitor website can be found here:
http://rtm.hep.ph.ic.ac.uk
For any comments or questions the developers can be reached at
lcg-monitor@imperial.ac.uk
If you are a regular user of the RTM or would like to be kept up to date with updates and help with the RTM please join the mailing list at
http://mailman.ic.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/rtm-users
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