2019 Abstract from Kiana

Documenting GlideinWMS through Web Design

Student Researcher: Kiana Mohammadian (Neuqua Valley High School)

Scientist Mentors: Mario Mambelli, Lorena Lobato Pardavila

This project was completed alongside Mario Mambelli and Lorena Lobato Pardavila in the Computing Division. The major focus for this project was to document a system that has been designed at Fermilab (GlideinWMS) through web design. GlideinWMS is a Workload Management System (WMS) for grid/cloud computing that matches user jobs (any piece of work that a user wishes to complete) to resources (machines or computers that can complete a user job) across the grid without being limited to a single domain or cluster of machines. GlideinWMS allows job completion and job scheduling to become much more efficient and easier for a user. 

A visual graphic of the process can be found here.

The website provides a platform upon which GlideinWMS is summarized, installation and download links are provided, and the details of working with the system are explained. The website will serve a variety of audiences, whether it be a developer, operator, or user who wishes to learn more about the system. 

The website is a static website, meaning that each webpage is an HTML file with limited separation of content from design. The goal of this project is to create an easily editable site that separates content from design, has a similar display regardless of the devices it is viewed on, allows a viewer to efficiently navigate through the subpages, and has a visual design that is appealing to the viewer. 

The project was divided into various substages including: 

1. Becoming familiarized with GlideinWMS
2. Choosing a suitable platform or technology to build the website with
3. Designing and structuring the website
4. Building the website

Eventually, it was decided that the website would be built through a static site generator, which allows for the use of simplified and more readable forms of HTML (markdown or reStructured text, for example) in the source code.  Jekyll, a specific static site generator, was chosen due to its easy integration with GitHub Pages (a hosting service) and the number of plug-ins and resources available for reference. The website was built using Jekyll, the Atom text editor, CSS, Markdown, and HTML.

Feel free to take a look at the current unedited website: http://glideinwms.fnal.gov/doc.prd/index.html