Brokering of risk‐aware service level agreements in grids

Service level agreements (SLAs) are facilitators for widening the commercial uptake of Grid technology. They provide explicit statements of expectation and obligation between service consumers and providers. However, without the ability to assess the probability that an SLA might fail, commercial uptake will be restricted, since neither party will be willing to agree. Therefore, risk assessment mechanisms are critical to increase confidence in Grid technology usage within the commercial sector. This paper presents an SLA brokering mechanism with risk assessment support, which evaluates the probability of SLA failure. WS‐Agreement and risk metrics are used to facilitate SLA creation between service consumers and providers within a typical Grid resource usage scenario. An evaluation is conducted to examine risk models, the performance of the broker's implementation as well as a comparison of its capabilities against similar SLA‐based solutions from the literature. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

论Web服务与网格

网格是网络与异构环境中基于Web服务的分布式网络计算系统。从计算机网络体系结构的观点来探讨网格与计算机网络和Web服务的关系,通过对基于Web服务的网格服务体系结构和OSI/RM框架的对比分析,提出了将实现开放式网格服务结构（OGSA）的计算机系统划分为OSI/RM域内的部分和对OSI/RM不可见部分,从而理清了网格服务体系结构的层次结构与计算机网络层次结构的异同。     

Conformance analysis in networks with service level agreements

To achieve some level of Quality of Service (QoS) assurance, a network usually has Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with its users and neighboring domains, which describe the QoS level that the service provider is committed to provide, and the specification of traffic that users or neighboring domains are allowed to send. An interesting and important question arises as to whether a flow is still conformant to its original traffic specification after crossing the network since it may interact with other flows within the network. In this paper, we study analytically the extent to which a flow and an aggregate of flows become non-conformant through an analysis of the stochastic burstiness increase of flows after crossing a per-flow scheduling network and an aggregate scheduling network . The stochastic behavior of a server in aggregate scheduling networks is also studied to determine the conformance deterioration of individual flows, which provides the theoretical conformance deterioration bound and provides useful results for conformance analysis in an aggregate scheduling network with general topology. Our theoretical results are verified by extensive simulations.     

Resource allocation in grid computing

Grid computing, in which a network of computers is integrated to create a very fast virtual computer, is becoming ever more prevalent. Examples include the TeraGrid and Planet-lab.org, as well as applications on the existing Internet that take advantage of unused computing and storage capacity of idle desktop machines, such as Kazaa, SETI@home, Climateprediction.net, and Einstein@home. Grid computing permits a network of computers to act as a very fast virtual computer. With many alternative computers available, each with varying extra capacity, and each of which may connect or disconnect from the grid at any time, it may make sense to send the same task to more than one computer. The application can then use the output of whichever computer finishes the task first. Thus, the important issue of the dynamic assignment of tasks to individual computers is complicated in grid computing by the option of assigning multiple copies of the same task to different computers. We show that under fairly mild and often reasonable conditions, maximizing task replication stochastically maximizes the number of task completions by any time. That is, it is better to do the same task on as many computers as possible, rather than assigning different tasks to individual computers. We show maximal task replication is optimal when tasks have identical size and processing times have a NWU (New Worse than Used; defined later) distribution. Computers may be heterogeneous and their speeds may vary randomly, as is the case in grid computing environments. We also show that maximal task replication, along with a c μ rule, stochastically maximizes the successful task completion process when task processing times are exponential and depend on both the task and computer, and tasks have different probabilities of completing successfully.     

Probabilistic versus possibilistic risk assessment models for optimal service level agreements in grid computing

We present a probabilistic and a possibilistic model for assessing the risk of a service level agreement for a computing task in a cluster/grid environment. These models can also be applied to cloud computing. Using the predictive probabilistic approach we develop a framework for resource management in grid computing, and by introducing an upper limit for the number of failures we approximate the probability that a particular computing task is successful. In the predictive possibility model we estimate the possibility distribution of the future number of node failures by a fuzzy nonparametric regression technique. Then the resource provider can use the probabilistic or the possibilistic model to get alternative risk assessments.     

Deriving business processes with service level agreements from early requirements

When designing a service-based business process employing loosely coupled services, one is not only interested in guaranteeing a certain flow of work, but also in how the work will be performed. This involves the consideration of non-functional properties which go from execution time and costs, to trust and security. Ideally, a designer would like to have guarantees over the behavior of the services involved in the process. These guarantees are the object of Service Level Agreements.We propose a methodology to design service-based business processes together with Service Level Agreements that guarantee a certain quality of execution, with particular emphasis on security. Starting from an early requirements analysis modeled in the Secure Tropos formalism, we provide a set of user-guided transformations and reasoning tools the final output of which is a set of processes in the form of Secure BPELs together with a set of Service Level Agreements to be signed by participating services. To show the potential impact of the approach, we illustrate the functioning of the methodology on a collaborative procurement scenario derived from the application domain of a research project.     

Cooperative power-aware scheduling in grid computing environments

Energy usage and its associated costs have taken on a new level of significance in recent years. Globally, energy costs that include the cooling of server rooms are now comparable to hardware costs, and these costs are on the increase with the rising cost of energy. As a result, there are efforts worldwide to design more efficient scheduling algorithms. Such scheduling algorithm for grids is further complicated by the fact that the different sites in a grid system are likely to have different ownerships. As such, it is not enough to simply minimize the total energy usage in the grid; instead one needs to simultaneously minimize energy usage between all the different providers in the grid. Apart from the multitude of ownerships of the different sites, a grid differs from traditional high performance computing systems in the heterogeneity of the computing nodes as well as the communication links that connect the different nodes together. In this paper, we propose a cooperative, power-aware game theoretic solution to the job scheduling problem in grids. We discuss our cooperative game model and present the structure of the Nash Bargaining Solution. Our proposed scheduling scheme maintains a specified Quality of Service (QoS) level and minimizes energy usage between all the providers simultaneously; energy usage is kept at a level that is sufficient to maintain the desired QoS level. Further, the proposed algorithm is fair to all users, and has robust performance against inaccuracies in performance prediction information.     

Service discovery for GRID computing using LCAN-mapped hierarchical directories

Hierarchical Directories were introduced to provide Service Address Routing (Scherson, Valencia in: Proceedings of the international symposium on parallel architectures, algorithms and networks (I-SPAN), Las Vegas, USA, 2005) embedded in a class of Hierarchical Interconnection Networks known as Least Common Ancestor Networks (LCANs). The algorithms for service discovery in SAR are shown to extend to the GRID when the LCAN is effectively mapped onto the loosely coupled Internet connected computing cluster. In SAR, nodes (programs) communicate by invoking services from the network itself. It is the network-embedded service discovery and addressing mechanism that provides the physical binding. Even though the SAR concept was conceived for tightly coupled interconnection networks, it can also be applied to an Internet GRID system by mapping the SAR network directory (considered to be LCAN-embedded) onto the loosely coupled GRID. Once the network is successfully mapped to the subjacent network, all scalability, fault-tolerance, functionality, and every other advantage of an LCAN-SAR system are automatically available in the resulting implementation. We present a novel way to perform a completely distributed and dynamic service discovery that not only performs faster lookups by avoiding well known bottlenecks in centralized systems, but has inherent fault tolerance mechanisms.     

A hybrid policy for fault tolerant load balancing in grid computing environments

Due to the emergence of grid computing over the Internet, there is a need for a hybrid load balancing algorithm which takes into account the various characteristics of the grid computing environment. Hence, this research proposes a fault tolerant hybrid load balancing strategy namely AlgHybrid_LB, which takes into account grid architecture, computer heterogeneity, communication delay, network bandwidth, resource availability, resource unpredictability and job characteristics. AlgHybrid_LB juxtaposes the strong points of neighbor-based and cluster based load balancing algorithms. Our main objective is to arrive at job assignments that could achieve minimum response time and optimal computing node utilization. Major achievements include low complexity of proposed approach and drastic reduction of number of additional communications induced due to load balancing. A simulation of the proposed approach using Grid Simulation Toolkit (GridSim) is conducted. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm performs very well in a large grid environment.     

基于OGSA的网格服务管理模型研究

网格服务管理是网格计算的核心问题。通过对于目前网格服务管理体系架构的三种模型进行分析和比较,基于开放式服务体系架构(OGSA),探讨了网格服务管理系统的功能需求,进而设计了一种层次化的网格服务管理模型HGSM,描述了模型的工作流程。将网格服务管理分为任务分解、静态调度和动态调度三种层次,讨论了HGSM的各个层次的相关功能模块,以有向无环图和高级随机Petri网分别对于任务分解和服务调度提出了相关算法,算法中的可实施谓词、随机开关、实施速率等描述可以直接在SPN求解软件的编程中实现,从而为构造一种层次化的网格服务管理模型提供一个可实现的有效途径。     

Definition, modelling and simulation of a grid computing scheduling system for high throughput computing

In this paper, we study and compare grid and global computing systems and outline the benefits of having a hybrid system called DIRAC. To evaluate the DIRAC scheduling for high throughput computing, a new model is presented and a simulator was developed for many clusters of heterogeneous nodes belonging to a local network. These clusters are assumed to be connected to each other through a global network and each cluster is managed via a local scheduler which is shared by many users. We validate our simulator by comparing the experimental and analytical results of a M/M/4 queuing system. Next, we do the comparison with a real batch system and we obtain an average error of 10.5% for the response time and 12% for the makespan. We conclude that the simulator is realistic and well describes the behaviour of a large-scale system. Thus we can study the scheduling of our system called DIRAC in a high throughput context. We justify our decentralized, adaptive and opportunistic approach in comparison to a centralized approach in such a context.     

A novel ANN-based service selection model for ubiquitous computing environments

How to choose an appropriate service from all the usable services regardless of user's location and heterogeneous architecture of underlying software and hardware infrastructure is the most important study content in ubiquitous computing domain. In order to overcome the shortcomings of blindness and randomicity in traditional and improved trust-mechanism-based service selection models, we propose a novel ANN-based (Artificial Neural Network) service selection model (called the ANNSS model). We adopt a novel method which according to the earlier information of the cooperation between the devices and the context information, an ANN-based evaluation standard for the service quality of service provider is given out so that user can acquire an effective guidance and choose the most appropriate service. At the same time, we improved the traditional BP algorithm based on three-term method (called the TTMBP algorithm) consisting of a learning rate (LR), a momentum factor (MF) and a proportional factor (PF) in order to satisfy the requirements of time issue in real-time system. The convergence speed and stability were enhanced by adding the proportional factor. The self-adjusting architecture method is adopted so that a moderate scale of neural network can be obtained. We have implemented the ANNSS algorithm in an actual power supply system for communication devices and fulfilled various simulations. The results of simulation show that the proposed service selection scheme is not only scalable but also efficient, and that the novel BP algorithm based on three-term has high convergence speed and good convergence stability. The novel service selection scheme superior to the traditional and improved trust-mechanism-based service selection scheme. The novel scheme can exactly choose a most appropriate service from many service providers and provide the most perfect service performance to users.     

Heuristic solutions to resource allocation in grid computing: a natural approach

Grid computing connects heterogeneous resources to achieve the illusion of being a single available entity. Charging for these resources based on demand is often referred to as utility computing, where resource providers lease computing power with varying costs based on processing speed. Consumers using this resource have time and cost constraints associated with each job they submit. Determining the optimal way to divide the job among the available resources with regard to the time and cost constraints is tasked to the Grid Resource Broker (GRB). The GRB must use an optimization algorithm that returns an accurate result in a timely manner. The genetic algorithm and the simulated annealing algorithm can both be used to achieve this goal, although simulated annealing outperforms the genetic algorithm for use by the GRB. Determining optimal values for the variables used in each algorithm is often achieved through trial and error, and success depends upon the solution domain of the problem.

An adaptive multi-policy grid service for biological sequence comparison

In the last decade, we have observed an unprecedented development in molecular biology. An extremely high number of organisms have been sequenced in genome projects and included in genomic databases, for further analysis. These databases present an exponential growth rate and they are intensively accessed daily, all over the world. Once a sequence is obtained, its function and/or structure must be determined. Direct experimentation is considered to be the most reliable method to do that. However, the experiments that must be conducted are very complex and time consuming. For this reason, it is far more productive to use computational methods to infer biological information from a sequence. This is usually done by comparing the new sequence with sequences that already had their characteristics determined. BLAST is the most widely used heuristic tool for sequence comparison. Thousands of BLAST searches are made daily, all over the world. In order to further reduce the BLAST execution time, cluster and grid environments can be effectively used. This paper proposes and evaluates an adaptive task allocation framework to perform BLAST searches in a grid environment. The framework, called PackageBLAST, provides an infrastructure that executes distributed BLAST genomic database comparisons. In addition, it is flexible since the user can choose or incorporate new task allocation strategies. Furthermore, we propose a mechanism to compute grid nodes’ execution weight, adapting the chosen allocation policy to the observed computational power and local load of the nodes. Our results present very good speedups. For instance, in a 16-machine heterogeneous grid testbed, a speedup of 14.59 was achieved, reducing the BLAST execution time from 30.88 min to 2.11 min. Also, we show that the adaptive task allocation strategy was able to handle successfully the complexity of a grid environment.     

Utility-based scheduling for grid computing under constraints of energy budget and deadline

With recent advances in computing and communication technologies enabling mobile devices more powerful, the scope of Grid computing has been broadened to include mobile and pervasive devices. Energy has become a critical resource in such devices. So, battery energy limitation is the main challenge towards enabling persistent mobile grid computing. In this paper, we address the problem of energy constrained scheduling scheme for the grid environment. There is a limited energy budget for grid applications. The paper investigates both energy minimization for mobile devices and grid utility optimization problem. We formalize energy aware scheduling using nonlinear optimization theory under constraints of energy budget and deadline. The paper also proposes distributed pricing based algorithm that is used to tradeoff energy and deadline to achieve a system wide optimization based on the preference of the grid user. The simulations reveal that the proposed energy constrained scheduling algorithms can obtain better performance than the previous approach that considers both energy consumption and deadline.     

A system-centric scheduling policy for optimizing objectives of application and resource in grid computing

In grid computing, grid users who submit applications and resources providers who provide resources have different motivations when they join the grid. Application-centric scheduling aims to optimize the performance of individual application. Resource-centric scheduling aims to optimize the resource utilization of resources provider. Due to autonomy both in grid users and resource providers, the objectives of application-centric and resource-centric scheduling often conflict. The paper proposes a system-centric scheduling that provides a solution of joint optimization of the objectives for both the grid resource and grid application. Utility functions are used to express the objectives of grid resource and application. The system-centric scheduling policy can be formulated as joint optimization of utilities of grid applications and grid resources, which combine both application centric and resource-centric scheduling benefits. Simulations are conducted to study the performance of the system-centric scheduling algorithm. The experiment results show that the system-centric scheduling algorithm yields significantly better performance than application-centric scheduling algorithm and resource-centric scheduling algorithm.     

A semantic service discovery approach for ubiquitous computing

Services in the ubiquitous computing are heterogeneous in nature. To be pervasive, these services should be defined in terms of their functionality and capabilities rather than the meaningless Universally Unique IDentifiers (UUIDs) or types of services. With that, clients can access the proper service based on semantic requests, rather then a pre-configured profile. In this paper, we study the requirements for semantic query to be feasible in service discovery processes. Current discovery protocols and the concept of semantics are brought together to construct a framework to realize the semantic service discovery for ubiquitous computing. Many issues are discussed in relation to service discovery topologies, ontology languages, and semantic query languages.     

A computational economy for grid computing and its implementation in the Nimrod-G resource broker

Computational grids that couple geographically distributed resources such as PCs, workstations, clusters, and scientific instruments, have emerged as a next generation computing platform for solving large-scale problems in science, engineering, and commerce. However, application development, resource management, and scheduling in these environments continue to be a complex undertaking. In this article, we discuss our efforts in developing a resource management system for scheduling computations on resources distributed across the world with varying quality of service (QoS). Our service-oriented grid computing system called Nimrod-G manages all operations associated with remote execution including resource discovery, trading, scheduling based on economic principles and a user-defined QoS requirement. The Nimrod-G resource broker is implemented by leveraging existing technologies such as Globus, and provides new services that are essential for constructing industrial-strength grids. We present the results of experiments using the Nimrod-G resource broker for scheduling parametric computations on the World Wide Grid (WWG) resources that span five continents.     

Communication mechanisms in ecological network-based grid middleware for service emergence

Next generation grid systems are heading for globally collaborative, service-oriented and live information systems that exhibit a strong sense of automation. A collection of autonomous agents is searched, assembled, and coordinated in a grid middleware system to produce desirable grid services. An effective communication mechanism is vital to the effectiveness of the step to build a novel grid middleware system. In this study, we provide our grid middleware with a flexible communication solution to implement the complicated behaviors among different agents. We propose a transport mechanism of grid middleware, named as ecological network communication language (ENCL) and ecological network interaction protocol (ENIP) respectively from a low-level to a high-level implementation strategy of a communication mechanism. A series of experiments demonstrate that a service with some of the desired properties can emerge from interacting agents via the proposed solution.