A Taxonomy of Data Grids for Distributed Data Sharing, Management and Processing

Data Grids have been adopted as the platform for scientific communities that need to share, access, transport, process and manage large data collections distributed worldwide. They combine high-end computing technologies with high-performance networking and wide-area storage management techniques. In this paper, we discuss the key concepts behind Data Grids and compare them with other data sharing and distribution paradigms such as content delivery networks, peer-to-peer networks and distributed databases. We then provide comprehensive taxonomies that cover various aspects of architecture, data transportation, data replication and resource allocation and scheduling. Finally, we map the proposed taxonomy to various Data Grid systems not only to validate the taxonomy but also to identify areas for future exploration. Through this taxonomy, we aim to categorise existing systems to better understand their goals and their methodology. This would help evaluate their applicability for solving similar problems. This taxonomy also provides a "gap analysis" of this area through which researchers can potentially identify new issues for investigation. Finally, we hope that the proposed taxonomy and mapping also helps to provide an easy way for new practitioners to understand this complex area of research.Comment: 46 pages, 16 figures, Technical Repor

A Taxonomy of Workflow Management Systems for Grid Computing

With the advent of Grid and application technologies, scientists and engineers are building more and more complex applications to manage and process large data sets, and execute scientific experiments on distributed resources. Such application scenarios require means for composing and executing complex workflows. Therefore, many efforts have been made towards the development of workflow management systems for Grid computing. In this paper, we propose a taxonomy that characterizes and classifies various approaches for building and executing workflows on Grids. We also survey several representative Grid workflow systems developed by various projects world-wide to demonstrate the comprehensiveness of the taxonomy. The taxonomy not only highlights the design and engineering similarities and differences of state-of-the-art in Grid workflow systems, but also identifies the areas that need further research.Comment: 29 pages, 15 figure

Analysis of simulation environment

In this paper the requirements for an ALN simulation environment are analysed, as needed in the CATNETS Project. A number of grid and general purpose simulators are evaluated regarding the identified requirements for simulating economical resource allocation mechanisms in ALNs. Subsequently a suitable simulator is chosen for usage in the CATNETS project. --CATNETS simulator,requirements analysis,simulator selection

MonALISA : A Distributed Monitoring Service Architecture

The MonALISA (Monitoring Agents in A Large Integrated Services Architecture) system provides a distributed monitoring service. MonALISA is based on a scalable Dynamic Distributed Services Architecture which is designed to meet the needs of physics collaborations for monitoring global Grid systems, and is implemented using JINI/JAVA and WSDL/SOAP technologies. The scalability of the system derives from the use of multithreaded Station Servers to host a variety of loosely coupled self-describing dynamic services, the ability of each service to register itself and then to be discovered and used by any other services, or clients that require such information, and the ability of all services and clients subscribing to a set of events (state changes) in the system to be notified automatically. The framework integrates several existing monitoring tools and procedures to collect parameters describing computational nodes, applications and network performance. It has built-in SNMP support and network-performance monitoring algorithms that enable it to monitor end-to-end network performance as well as the performance and state of site facilities in a Grid. MonALISA is currently running around the clock on the US CMS test Grid as well as an increasing number of other sites. It is also being used to monitor the performance and optimize the interconnections among the reflectors in the VRVS system.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 8 pages, pdf. PSN MOET00

Analysis and selection of the simulation environment

This document provides the initial report of the Simulation work package (Work Package 4,WP4) of the CATNETS project. It contains an analisys of the requirements for a simulation tool to be used in CATNETS and an evaluation of a number of grid and general purpose simulators with respect to the selected requirements. A reasoned choice of a suitable simulator is performed based on the evaluation conducted. -- Diese Arbeit analysiert die Anforderungen an eine Simulationsumgebung für die Analyse der Katallaxie. Anhand von Kennzahlen wird die Auswahl der Simulationsumgebung bestimmt.Grid Computing