The Semantic Grid: A future e-Science infrastructure

e-Science offers a promising vision of how computer and communication technology can support and enhance the scientific process. It does this by enabling scientists to generate, analyse, share and discuss their insights, experiments and results in an effective manner. The underlying computer infrastructure that provides these facilities is commonly referred to as the Grid. At this time, there are a number of grid applications being developed and there is a whole raft of computer technologies that provide fragments of the necessary functionality. However there is currently a major gap between these endeavours and the vision of e-Science in which there is a high degree of easy-to-use and seamless automation and in which there are flexible collaborations and computations on a global scale. To bridge this practice–aspiration divide, this paper presents a research agenda whose aim is to move from the current state of the art in e-Science infrastructure, to the future infrastructure that is needed to support the full richness of the e-Science vision. Here the future e-Science research infrastructure is termed the Semantic Grid (Semantic Grid to Grid is meant to connote a similar relationship to the one that exists between the Semantic Web and the Web). In particular, we present a conceptual architecture for the Semantic Grid. This architecture adopts a service-oriented perspective in which distinct stakeholders in the scientific process, represented as software agents, provide services to one another, under various service level agreements, in various forms of marketplace. We then focus predominantly on the issues concerned with the way that knowledge is acquired and used in such environments since we believe this is the key differentiator between current grid endeavours and those envisioned for the Semantic Grid

Capacity planning and stochastic scheduling in grid computing environments

Imperial Users onl

Design and implementation of a multi-agent opportunistic grid computing platform

Opportunistic Grid Computing involves joining idle computing resources in enterprises into a converged high performance commodity infrastructure. The research described in this dissertation investigates the viability of public resource computing in offering a plethora of possibilities through seamless access to shared compute and storage resources. The research proposes and conceptualizes the Multi-Agent Opportunistic Grid (MAOG) solution in an Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) initiative to address some limitations prevalent in traditional distributed system implementations. Proof-of-concept software components based on JADE (Java Agent Development Framework) validated Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) as an important tool for provisioning of Opportunistic Grid Computing platforms. Exploration of agent technologies within the research context identified two key components which improve access to extended computer capabilities. The first component is a Mobile Agent (MA) compute component in which a group of agents interact to pool shared processor cycles. The compute component integrates dynamic resource identification and allocation strategies by incorporating the Contract Net Protocol (CNP) and rule based reasoning concepts. The second service is a MAS based storage component realized through disk mirroring and Google file-system’s chunking with atomic append storage techniques. This research provides a candidate Opportunistic Grid Computing platform design and implementation through the use of MAS. Experiments conducted validated the design and implementation of the compute and storage services. From results, support for processing user applications; resource identification and allocation; and rule based reasoning validated the MA compute component. A MAS based file-system that implements chunking optimizations was considered to be optimum based on evaluations. The findings from the undertaken experiments also validated the functional adequacy of the implementation, and show the suitability of MAS for provisioning of robust, autonomous, and intelligent platforms. The context of this research, ICT4D, provides a solution to optimizing and increasing the utilization of computing resources that are usually idle in these contexts

A service broker for Intercloud computing

This thesis aims at assisting users in finding the most suitable Cloud resources taking into account their functional and non-functional SLA requirements. A key feature of the work is a Cloud service broker acting as mediator between consumers and Clouds. The research involves the implementation and evaluation of two SLA-aware match-making algorithms by use of a simulation environment. The work investigates also the optimal deployment of Multi-Cloud workflows on Intercloud environments

Design and implementation of a multi-agent opportunistic grid computing platform

Opportunistic Grid Computing involves joining idle computing resources in enterprises into a converged high performance commodity infrastructure. The research described in this dissertation investigates the viability of public resource computing in offering a plethora of possibilities through seamless access to shared compute and storage resources. The research proposes and conceptualizes the Multi-Agent Opportunistic Grid (MAOG) solution in an Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) initiative to address some limitations prevalent in traditional distributed system implementations. Proof-of-concept software components based on JADE (Java Agent Development Framework) validated Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) as an important tool for provisioning of Opportunistic Grid Computing platforms. Exploration of agent technologies within the research context identified two key components which improve access to extended computer capabilities. The first component is a Mobile Agent (MA) compute component in which a group of agents interact to pool shared processor cycles. The compute component integrates dynamic resource identification and allocation strategies by incorporating the Contract Net Protocol (CNP) and rule based reasoning concepts. The second service is a MAS based storage component realized through disk mirroring and Google file-system’s chunking with atomic append storage techniques. This research provides a candidate Opportunistic Grid Computing platform design and implementation through the use of MAS. Experiments conducted validated the design and implementation of the compute and storage services. From results, support for processing user applications; resource identification and allocation; and rule based reasoning validated the MA compute component. A MAS based file-system that implements chunking optimizations was considered to be optimum based on evaluations. The findings from the undertaken experiments also validated the functional adequacy of the implementation, and show the suitability of MAS for provisioning of robust, autonomous, and intelligent platforms. The context of this research, ICT4D, provides a solution to optimizing and increasing the utilization of computing resources that are usually idle in these contexts

Reference architecture for Virtual Organization

"United we stand, divided we fall" ist eine bekannte Englische Redewendung. Wir leben in der Zeit der virtuellen Zusammenarbeit. Quellen sind logisch und Lösungen virtuell. Fortschritte auf der konzeptionellen und technologischen Ebene verbessern die Weise der menschlichen Kommunikation. Everything-as-a-Service war einmal nur ein Traum. Heute wird es Realität. Auch die Art der zu bewältigenden Probleme hat sich im Laufe der Zeit verändert. Heutzutage wird die Online-Kollaboration Über das Internet (e-Collaboration) in allen möglichen wissenschaftlichen Gebieten angewendet. Medizin, Technik, Meteorologie, Biologie, Chemie, Physik, Erdbeben und Wettervorhersage, Soziale Netzwerke usw., alle benutzen elektronische Plattformen. Umfangreiche Daten und Rechenressourcen sind nötig und auch die Assistenz durch menschlichee Experten wird immer bedeutsamer. Diese Situation stellt eine grosse Verantwortung fÜr IT Forscher und Entwickler dar, generische Plattformen zu schaffen, auf denen Benutzer einfach kommunizieren und Probleme gemeinsam lösen können. Das Verteiltes Rechnen (Distributed Computing) bietet viele technische Paradigmen an, wie zum Beispiel Cluster Computing, Grid Computing, Cloud Computing, um dieses Konzept umzusetzen. Konzeptuell erlauben Virtuelle Organisationen (Virtual Organization) ein harmonisches Zusammenspiel von global verbreiteten Ressourcen, um gemeinsam Ziele zu erreichen. Bestehende Paradigmen und Technologie werden heute in der Praxis zum Aufbau von Virtuellen Organisationen verwendet. Der Mangel an existierenden und anerkannten Standards dazu stellt jedoch ein kritischer Punkt fÜr die letzten zwei Dekaden dar. Unsere ForschungsbemÜhung konzentriert sich daher auf die Entwicklung eines Standards zum Entwurf und zur Realisierung Virtueller Organisationen. Der vorgelegte Standardisierungsansatz besteht aus zwei Phasen. Die erste Phase fÜhrt eine Anforderungsanalyse durch und die zweite Phase stellt eine Referenzarchitektur (Reference Architecture) fÜr Virtuelle Organisationen (RAVO) vor. Dieser Standardisierungsansatz wurde gewählt um sowohl technologische als auch paradigmatische Wechsel zu erlauben. Wir teilen unsere BemÜhungen in zwei Bereiche. Zuerst präsentieren wir einen Modellierungsansatz, um die Anforderungen und Komponenten der Virtuellen Organisation [1] zu identifiziert. Danach definieren wir einen generischen Rahmen, der auf dem Everything-as-a-Service Konzept aufbaut. Stakeholders sind ein wichtiges Element in jeder kooperationsunterstÜtzenden Umgebung [2] [3]. Daher haben wir ein neuartiges Schema fÜr Stakeholders entwickelt, die es erlaubt Beziehung zwischen Benutzer und Ressourcen in Form von Subjekten [1] [4] abzubilden. Zum Schluss werden diese Konzepte in Form konkreter Umsetzungen auf dem Gebiet des E-Learning und der Computational Intelligence untersucht. Die neuen Elemente der Stakeholders und Subjekt-Beziehungen wurden weiters in informelle Virtuelle Organisationen, sogenannten Sozialen Netzwerken, verifiziert [5]. Zur Evaluation des vorgestellten Ansatzes wurde schliesslich eine praktische Umsetzung, die auf RAVO basiert, unter dem Namen N2Sky als Masterarbeit an der Universität Wien durchgefÜhrt.“United we stand, divided we fall" is a well known saying. We are living in the era of virtual collaborations. Resources are logical and solutions are virtual. Advancement on conceptual and technological level has enhanced the way people communicate. Everything-as-a-Service once a dream, now becoming a reality. Problem nature has also been changed over the time. Today, e-Collaborations are applied to all the domains possible. Medical, engineering, meteorology, biology, chemistry, physics, earthquake and weather forecast, social networks and so on, all are using electronic platforms. Extensive data and computing resources are in need and assistance from human experts is also becoming essential. This puts a great responsibility on Information Technology (IT) researchers and developers to provide generic platforms where user can easily communicate and solve their problems. To realize this concept, distributed computing has offered many paradigms, e.g. cluster, grid, cloud computing. Virtual Organization (VO) is a logical orchestration of globally dispersed resources to achieve common goals. Existing paradigms and technology is used to form Virtual Organization, but lack of standards remained a critical issue for last two decades. Our research endeavor focuses on developing a standard for Virtual Organization building process. The proposed standardization process is a two phase activity. First phase provides requirement analysis and the second phase presents a Reference Architecture for Virtual Organization (RAVO). This form of standardization is chosen to accommodate both technological and paradigm shift. We categorize our efforts in two parts. First part consists of a pattern to identify the requirements and components of a Virtual Organization [1]. Second part details a generic framework based on the concept of Everything-as-a-Service. Stakeholders are an important entity in any collaborative environment [2] [3]. We developed a pattern for stakeholders and presented new relationship between user and resources in form of Subject [1] [4]. Finally, these concepts are materialized as a concrete framework in the domain of E-learning and Computational Intelligence. Stakeholders and Subject relationship are also verified in the domain of informal Virtual Organizations (e.g. Social Networks) [5]. For evaluation purpose an instance based on RAVO, named N2SKY [6] is developed by a master student at the University of Vienna