How are Real Grids Used? The Analysis of Four Grid Traces and Its Implications

The grid computing vision promises to provide the needed platform for a new and more demanding range of applications. For this promise to become true, a number of hurdles, including the design and deployment of adequate resource management and information services, need to be overcome. In this context, understanding the characteristics of real grid workloads is a crucial step for improving the quality of existing grid services, and in guiding the design of new solutions. Towards this goal, in this work we present the characteristics of traces of four real grid environments, namely LCG, Grid3, and TeraGrid, which are among the largest production grids currently deployed, and the DAS, which is a research grid. We focus our analysis on virtual organizations, on users, and on individual jobs characteristics. We further attempt to quantify the evolution and the performance of the grid systems from which our traces originate. Finally, given the scarcity of the information available for analysis purposes, we discuss the requirements of a new format for grid traces, and we propose the establishment of a virtual center for workload-based grid benchmarking data: the grid workloads archive

Reusable cost-based scheduling of grid workflows operating on higher-order components

Grid applications are increasingly being developed as workflows built of well-structured, reusable components. We develop a user-transparent scheduling approach for Higher-Order Components (HOCs) . parallel implementations of typical programming patterns, accessible and customizable via Web services. We introduce a set of cost functions for a reusable scheduling: when the workflow recurs, it is mapped to the same execution nodes, avoiding the need for a repeated scheduling phase. We prove the efficiency of our scheduling by implementing it within the KOALA scheduler and comparing it with KOALA's standard Closeto- File policy. Experiments on scheduling HOC-based applications achieve a 40% speedup in communication and a 100% throughput increase

ДОСЯГНЕННЯ ЕФЕКТИВНОГО РОЗПОДІЛЕНОГО ПЛАНУВАННЯ ЗА ДОПОМОГОЮ ЧЕРГ ПОВІДОМЛЕНЬ У ХМАРІ ДЛЯ БАГАТОЗАДАЧНИХ ОБЧИСЛЕНЬ ТА ВИСОКОПРОДУКТИВНИХ ОБЧИСЛЕНЬ

Due to the growth of data and the number of computational tasks, it is necessary to ensure the required level of system performance. Performance can be achieved by scaling the system horizontally / vertically, but even increasing the amount of computing resources does not solve all the problems. For example, a complex computational problem should be decomposed into smaller subtasks, the computation time of which is much shorter. However, the number of such tasks may be constantly increasing, due to which the processing on the services is delayed or even certain messages will not be processed. In many cases, message processing should be coordinated, for example, message A should be processed only after messages B and C. Given the problems of processing a large number of subtasks, we aim in this work - to design a mechanism for effective distributed scheduling through message queues. As services we will choose cloud services Amazon Webservices such as Amazon EC2, SQS and DynamoDB. Our FlexQueue solution can compete with state-of-the-art systems such as Sparrow and MATRIX. Distributed systems are quite complex and require complex algorithms and control units, so the solution of this problem requires detailed research.Due to the growth of data and the number of computational tasks, it is necessary to ensure the required level of system performance. Performance can be achieved by scaling the system horizontally / vertically, but even increasing the amount of computing resources does not solve all the problems. For example, a complex computational problem should be decomposed into smaller subtasks, the computation time of which is much shorter. However, the number of such tasks may be constantly increasing, due to which the processing on the services is delayed or even certain messages will not be processed. In many cases, message processing should be coordinated, for example, message A should be processed only after messages B and C. Given the problems of processing a large number of subtasks, we aim in this work - to design a mechanism for effective distributed scheduling through message queues. As services we will choose cloud services Amazon Webservices such as Amazon EC2, SQS and DynamoDB. Our FlexQueue solution can compete with state-of-the-art systems such as Sparrow and MATRIX. Distributed systems are quite complex and require complex algorithms and control units, so the solution of this problem requires detailed research

Cloud access to interoperable IVOA-compliant VOSpace storage

Handling, processing and archiving the huge amount of data produced by the new generation of experiments and instruments in Astronomy and Astrophysics are among the more exciting challenges to address in designing the future data management infrastructures and computing services. We investigated the feasibility of a data management and computation infrastructure, available world-wide, with the aim of merging the FAIR data management provided by IVOA standards with the efficiency and reliability of a cloud approach. Our work involved the Canadian Advanced Network for Astronomy Research (CANFAR) infrastructure and the European EGI federated cloud (EFC). We designed and deployed a pilot data management and computation infrastructure that provides IVOA-compliant VOSpace storage resources and wide access to interoperable federated clouds. In this paper, we detail the main user requirements covered, the technical choices and the implemented solutions and we describe the resulting Hybrid cloud Worldwide infrastructure, its benefits and limitation

Autonomous grid scheduling using probabilistic job runtime scheduling

Computational Grids are evolving into a global, service-oriented architecture – a universal platform for delivering future computational services to a range of applications of varying complexity and resource requirements. The thesis focuses on developing a new scheduling model for general-purpose, utility clusters based on the concept of user requested job completion deadlines. In such a system, a user would be able to request each job to finish by a certain deadline, and possibly to a certain monetary cost. Implementing deadline scheduling is dependent on the ability to predict the execution time of each queued job, and on an adaptive scheduling algorithm able to use those predictions to maximise deadline adherence. The thesis proposes novel solutions to these two problems and documents their implementation in a largely autonomous and self-managing way. The starting point of the work is an extensive analysis of a representative Grid workload revealing consistent workflow patterns, usage cycles and correlations between the execution times of jobs and its properties commonly collected by the Grid middleware for accounting purposes. An automated approach is proposed to identify these dependencies and use them to partition the highly variable workload into subsets of more consistent and predictable behaviour. A range of time-series forecasting models, applied in this context for the first time, were used to model the job execution times as a function of their historical behaviour and associated properties. Based on the resulting predictions of job runtimes a novel scheduling algorithm is able to estimate the latest job start time necessary to meet the requested deadline and sort the queue accordingly to minimise the amount of deadline overrun. The testing of the proposed approach was done using the actual job trace collected from a production Grid facility. The best performing execution time predictor (the auto-regressive moving average method) coupled to workload partitioning based on three simultaneous job properties returned the median absolute percentage error centroid of only 4.75%. This level of prediction accuracy enabled the proposed deadline scheduling method to reduce the average deadline overrun time ten-fold compared to the benchmark batch scheduler. Overall, the thesis demonstrates that deadline scheduling of computational jobs on the Grid is achievable using statistical forecasting of job execution times based on historical information. The proposed approach is easily implementable, substantially self-managing and better matched to the human workflow making it well suited for implementation in the utility Grids of the future

A grid computing framework for commercial simulation packages

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.An increased need for collaborative research among different organizations, together with continuing advances in communication technology and computer hardware, has facilitated the development of distributed systems that can provide users non-trivial access to geographically dispersed computing resources (processors, storage, applications, data, instruments, etc.) that are administered in multiple computer domains. The term grid computing or grids is popularly used to refer to such distributed systems. A broader definition of grid computing includes the use of computing resources within an organization for running organization-specific applications. This research is in the context of using grid computing within an enterprise to maximize the use of available hardware and software resources for processing enterprise applications. Large scale scientific simulations have traditionally been the primary benefactor of grid computing. The application of this technology to simulation in industry has, however, been negligible. This research investigates how grid technology can be effectively exploited by simulation practitioners using Windows-based commercially available simulation packages to model simulations in industry. These packages are commonly referred to as Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Simulation Packages (CSPs). The study identifies several higher level grid services that could be potentially used to support the practise of simulation in industry. It proposes a grid computing framework to investigate these services in the context of CSP-based simulations. This framework is called the CSP-Grid Computing (CSP-GC) Framework. Each identified higher level grid service in this framework is referred to as a CSP-specific service. A total of six case studies are presented to experimentally evaluate how grid computing technologies can be used together with unmodified simulation packages to support some of the CSP-specific services. The contribution of this thesis is the CSP-GC framework that identifies how simulation practise in industry may benefit from the use of grid technology. A further contribution is the recognition of specific grid computing software (grid middleware) that can possibly be used together with existing CSPs to provide grid support. With its focus on end-users and end-user tools, it is intended that this research will encourage wider adoption of grid computing in the workplace and that simulation users will derive benefit from using this technology

The Inter-cloud meta-scheduling

Inter-cloud is a recently emerging approach that expands cloud elasticity. By facilitating an adaptable setting, it purposes at the realization of a scalable resource provisioning that enables a diversity of cloud user requirements to be handled efficiently. This study’s contribution is in the inter-cloud performance optimization of job executions using metascheduling concepts. This includes the development of the inter-cloud meta-scheduling (ICMS) framework, the ICMS optimal schemes and the SimIC toolkit. The ICMS model is an architectural strategy for managing and scheduling user services in virtualized dynamically inter-linked clouds. This is achieved by the development of a model that includes a set of algorithms, namely the Service-Request, Service-Distribution, Service-Availability and Service-Allocation algorithms. These along with resource management optimal schemes offer the novel functionalities of the ICMS where the message exchanging implements the job distributions method, the VM deployment offers the VM management features and the local resource management system details the management of the local cloud schedulers. The generated system offers great flexibility by facilitating a lightweight resource management methodology while at the same time handling the heterogeneity of different clouds through advanced service level agreement coordination. Experimental results are productive as the proposed ICMS model achieves enhancement of the performance of service distribution for a variety of criteria such as service execution times, makespan, turnaround times, utilization levels and energy consumption rates for various inter-cloud entities, e.g. users, hosts and VMs. For example, ICMS optimizes the performance of a non-meta-brokering inter-cloud by 3%, while ICMS with full optimal schemes achieves 9% optimization for the same configurations. The whole experimental platform is implemented into the inter-cloud Simulation toolkit (SimIC) developed by the author, which is a discrete event simulation framework

Self-adaptive Grid Resource Monitoring and discovery

The Grid provides a novel platform where the scientific and engineering communities can share data and computation across multiple administrative domains. There are several key services that must be offered by Grid middleware; one of them being the Grid Information Service( GIS). A GIS is a Grid middleware component which maintains information about hardware, software, services and people participating in a virtual organisation( VO). There is an inherent need in these systems for the delivery of reliable performance. This thesis describes a number of approaches which detail the development and application of a suite of benchmarks for the prediction of the process of resource discovery and monitoring on the Grid. A series of experimental studies of the characterisation of performance using benchmarking, are carried out. Several novel predictive algorithms are presented and evaluated in terms of their predictive error. Furthermore, predictive methods are developed which describe the behaviour of MDS2 for a variable number of user requests. The MDS is also extended to include job information from a local scheduler; this information is queried using requests of greatly varying complexity. The response of the MDS to these queries is then assessed in terms of several performance metrics. The benchmarking of the dynamic nature of information within MDS3 which is based on the Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA), and also the successor to MDS2, is also carried out. The performance of both the pull and push query mechanisms is analysed. GridAdapt (Self-adaptive Grid Resource Monitoring) is a new system that is proposed, built upon the Globus MDS3 benchmarking. It offers self-adaptation, autonomy and admission control at the Index Service, whilst ensuring that the MIDS is not overloaded and can meet its quality-of-service,f or example,i n terms of its average response time for servicing synchronous queries and the total number of queries returned per unit time