MAGDA: A Mobile Agent based Grid Architecture

Mobile agents mean both a technology and a programming paradigm. They allow for a flexible approach which can alleviate a number of issues present in distributed and Grid-based systems, by means of features such as migration, cloning, messaging and other provided mechanisms. In this paper we describe an architecture (MAGDA – Mobile Agent based Grid Architecture) we have designed and we are currently developing to support programming and execution of mobile agent based application upon Grid systems

Coalition Formation and Combinatorial Auctions; Applications to Self-organization and Self-management in Utility Computing

In this paper we propose a two-stage protocol for resource management in a hierarchically organized cloud. The first stage exploits spatial locality for the formation of coalitions of supply agents; the second stage, a combinatorial auction, is based on a modified proxy-based clock algorithm and has two phases, a clock phase and a proxy phase. The clock phase supports price discovery; in the second phase a proxy conducts multiple rounds of a combinatorial auction for the package of services requested by each client. The protocol strikes a balance between low-cost services for cloud clients and a decent profit for the service providers. We also report the results of an empirical investigation of the combinatorial auction stage of the protocol.Comment: 14 page

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

Cluster-Based Load Balancing Algorithms for Grids

E-science applications may require huge amounts of data and high processing power where grid infrastructures are very suitable for meeting these requirements. The load distribution in a grid may vary leading to the bottlenecks and overloaded sites. We describe a hierarchical dynamic load balancing protocol for Grids. The Grid consists of clusters and each cluster is represented by a coordinator. Each coordinator first attempts to balance the load in its cluster and if this fails, communicates with the other coordinators to perform transfer or reception of load. This process is repeated periodically. We analyze the correctness, performance and scalability of the proposed protocol and show from the simulation results that our algorithm balances the load by decreasing the number of high loaded nodes in a grid environment.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figures; International Journal of Computer Networks, volume3, number 5, 201

Mobile Computing in Physics Analysis - An Indicator for eScience

This paper presents the design and implementation of a Grid-enabled physics analysis environment for handheld and other resource-limited computing devices as one example of the use of mobile devices in eScience. Handheld devices offer great potential because they provide ubiquitous access to data and round-the-clock connectivity over wireless links. Our solution aims to provide users of handheld devices the capability to launch heavy computational tasks on computational and data Grids, monitor the jobs status during execution, and retrieve results after job completion. Users carry their jobs on their handheld devices in the form of executables (and associated libraries). Users can transparently view the status of their jobs and get back their outputs without having to know where they are being executed. In this way, our system is able to act as a high-throughput computing environment where devices ranging from powerful desktop machines to small handhelds can employ the power of the Grid. The results shown in this paper are readily applicable to the wider eScience community.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures. Presented at the 3rd Int Conf on Mobile Computing & Ubiquitous Networking (ICMU06. London October 200