A taxonomy and survey of grid resource management systems for distributed computing

The resource management system is the central component of distributed network computing systems. There have been many projects focused on network computing that have designed and implemented resource management systems with a variety of architectures and services. In this paper, an abstract model and a comprehensive taxonomy for describing resource management architectures is developed. The taxonomy is used to identify approaches followed in the implementation of existing resource management systems for very large‐scale network computing systems known as Grids. The taxonomy and the survey results are used to identify architectural approaches and issues that have not been fully explored in the research. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An Efficient DWT and Intuitionistic Fuzzy Based Multimodality Medical Image Fusion

Image fusion aims to integrate complementary information from multiple modalities into a single image with none distortion and loss of data. Image fusion is important in medical imaging, specifically for the purpose of detecting the tumor and identification of diseases. In this article, completely unique discrete wavelet transform (DWT) and intuitionistic fuzzy sets (IFSs) based fusion method (DWT‐IFS) is proposed. For fusion, initially, all source images are fused using DWT with the average, maximum, and entropy fusion rules. Besides, on the fused image IFS is applied. In the IFS process images are converted into intuitionistic fuzzy images (IFIs) by selecting an optimum value for the parameter in membership, non‐membership, and hesitation degree function using entropy. Then, the resulting IFIs are decomposed into the blocks, and the corresponding blocks of the images are fused using the intersection and union operations of IFS. The efficiency of the proposed DWT‐IFS fusion method is recognized by examining it with other existing methods, such as Averaging (AVG), Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Laplacian Pyramid Approach (LPA), Contrast Pyramid Approach (CPA), Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT), Morphological Pyramid Approach (MPA), Redundancy Discrete Wavelet Transform (RDWT), Contourlet Transform (CONTRA), and Intuitionistic Fuzzy Set (IFS) using subjective and objective performance evaluation measures. The experimental results reveal that the proposed DWT‐IFS fusion method provides higher quality of information in terms of physical properties and contrast as compared to the existing methods.     

Ontology‐based Grid resource management

Grid resources are typically diverse in nature with respect to their software and hardware configurations, resource usage policies and the kind of application they support. Aggregating and monitoring these resources, and discovering suitable resources for the applications become a challenging issue. This is partially due to the representation of Grid metadata supported by the existing Grid middleware which offers limited scope for matching the job requirements that directly affect scheduling decisions. This paper proposes a semantic component in conventional Grid architecture to support ontology‐based representation of Grid metadata and facilitate context‐based information retrieval that complements Grid schedulers for effective resource management. Web Ontology language is used for creating Grid resource ontology and Algernon inference engine has been used for resource discovery. This semantic component has been integrated with conventional Grid schedulers. Several experiments have also been carried out to investigate the performance overhead that arises while integrating this component with Grid schedulers. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An SCP-based heuristic approach for scheduling distributed data-intensive applications on global grids

Data-intensive Grid applications need access to large data sets that may each be replicated on different resources. Minimizing the overhead of transferring these data sets to the resources where the applications are executed requires that appropriate computational and data resources be selected. In this paper, we consider the problem of scheduling an application composed of a set of independent tasks, each of which requires multiple data sets that are each replicated on multiple resources. We break this problem into two parts: one, to match each task (or job) to one compute resource for executing the job and one storage resource each for accessing each data set required by the job and two, to assign the set of tasks to the selected resources. We model the first part as an instance of the well-known Set Covering Problem (SCP) and apply a known heuristic for SCP to match jobs to resources. The second part is tackled by extending existing MinMin and Sufferage algorithms to schedule the set of distributed data-intensive tasks. Through simulation, we experimentally compare the SCP-based matching heuristic to others in conjunction with the task scheduling algorithms and present the results.     

EMUSIM: an integrated emulation and simulation environment for modeling,evaluation, and validation of performance of Cloud computing applications

Cloud computing allows the deployment and delivery of application services for users worldwide. Software as a Service providers with limited upfront budget can take advantage of Cloud computing and lease the required capacity in a pay‐as‐you‐go basis, which also enables flexible and dynamic resource allocation according to service demand. One key challenge potential Cloud customers have before renting resources is to know how their services will behave in a set of resources and the costs involved when growing and shrinking their resource pool. Most of the studies in this area rely on simulation‐based experiments, which consider simplified modeling of applications and computing environment. In order to better predict service's behavior on Cloud platforms, we developed an integrated architecture that is based on both simulation and emulation. The proposed architecture, named EMUSIM, automatically extracts information from application behavior via emulation and then uses this information to generate the corresponding simulation model. We performed experiments using an image processing application as a case study and found that EMUSIM was able to accurately model such application via emulation and use the model to supply information about its potential performance in a Cloud provider. We also discuss our experience using EMUSIM for deploying applications in a real public Cloud provider. EMUSIM is based on an open source software stack and therefore it can be extended for analysis behavior of several other applications. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

QoS and preemption aware scheduling in federated and virtualized Grid computing environments

Resource provisioning is one of the challenges in federated Grid environments. In these environments each Grid serves requests from external users along with local users. Recently, this resource provisioning is performed in the form of Virtual Machines (VMs). The problem arises when there are insufficient resources for local users to be served. The problem gets complicated further when external requests have different QoS requirements. Serving local users could be solved by preempting VMs from external users which impose overheads on the system. Therefore, the question is how the number of VM preemptions in a Grid can be minimized. Additionally, how we can decrease the likelihood of preemption for requests with more QoS requirements. We propose a scheduling policy in InterGrid, as a federated Grid, which reduces the number of VM preemptions and dispatches external requests in a way that fewer requests with QoS constraints get affected by preemption. Extensive simulation results indicate that the number of VM preemptions is decreased at least by 60%, particularly, for requests with more QoS requirements.     

Coordinated load management in Peer-to-Peer coupled federated grid systems

This paper proposes a coordinated load management protocol for Peer-to-Peer?(P2P) coupled federated Grid systems. The participants in the system, such as the resource providers and the consumers who belong to multiple control domains, work together to enable a coordinated federation. The coordinated load management protocol embeds a logical spatial index over a Distributed Hash Table?(DHT) space for efficient management of the coordination objects; the DHT-based space serves as a kind of decentralized blackboard system. We show that our coordination protocol has a message complexity that is logarithmic to the number of nodes in the system, which is significantly better than existing broadcast based coordination protocols. The proposed load management protocol can be applied for efficiently coordinating resource brokering services of distributed computing systems such as grids and PlanetLab. Resource brokering services are the main components that control the way applications are scheduled, managed and allocated in a distributed, heterogeneous, and dynamic Grid computing environments. Existing Grid resource brokers, e-Science application work-flow schedulers, operate in tandem but still lack a coordination mechanism that can lead to efficient application schedules across distributed resources. Further, lack of coordination exacerbates the utilization of various resources (such as computing cycles and network bandwidth). The feasibility of the proposed coordinated load management protocol is studied through extensive simulations.     

A prediction system for assessing customer affordability of whole life cycle cost in defence industry

The manufacturing, delivery and support of service contracts in defence aerospace industry require a high financial investment. It is essential that the customer has the financial ability to procure and support the contract from the conceptual and manufacturing phase to the end of the project given the budget constraints. The aim of this paper is to identify the factors that affect customer affordability of defence contracts and develop a customer affordability assessment framework which is implemented as a software prototype system. Two major quantitative factors and twelve qualitative factors were identified, out which seven factors (identified as the major factors) were included within the customer affordability system. Following the identification of factors and development of measures for each, suggested actions to improve customer affordability were also proposed. The research methodology combined both case study and literature review approach with industrial collaboration in the customer affordability system development. The customer affordability system was validated through collaboration with industrial partners and a case study from defence sector and the results showed that the customer affordability system was capable of providing a good assessment of customer affordability.     

Influence of the concentration of capping agent on synthesizing and analyses of Ceria nano-filler using modified co-precipitation technique

The pure crystalline cerium oxide (CeO₂) nanoparticles were synthesized using optimized content of Ce(NO₃)₃. 6H₂O with varying concentrations of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) (0.5, 1, 1.5, and 2 M) as a precipitation agent in presence of 2.5 wt% poly(vinylpyrrolidone) PVP. All the samples are prepared via the modified coprecipitation technique. The synthesized materials have been analyzed using X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), laser Raman, high-resolution scanning electron microscope (HR-SEM), and photo luminescence (PL) analyses. The optimized sample was identified with the help of the above studies that could be analyzed through transverse electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) studies. The cubic structure with the Fm-3 m space group has been confirmed through XRD (JCPDS: 81-0792) and Raman analyses. The FT-IR and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) analyses ascertain the occurrence of Ce and O species. The as-prepared CeO₂ filler (0, 3, 6, 9, and 12 wt%) is dispersed through the optimized polymer electrolyte Poly (styrene-co-methyl methacrylate) P(S-MMA) (27 wt%)–lithium perchloride (LiClO₄) (8 wt%)–ethylene carbonate + propylene carbonate (EC + PC) (1;1 of 65 wt%) complex system using solution casting technique. P(S-MMA) (27 wt%)–LiClO₄ (8 wt%)–EC + PC (1;1 of 65 wt%)–6 wt% of CeO₂ shows the high ionic conductivity 8.13 × 10⁻⁴ S cm⁻¹.     

Scour in Long Contractions

Experimental results on local scour in long contractions for uniform and nonuniform sediments (gravels and sands) under clear-water scour are presented. An emphasis was given to conduct the experiments on scour in long contractions for gravels. The findings of the experiments are used to describe the effects of various parameters (obtained from dimensional analysis) on equilibrium scour depth under clear-water scour. The equilibrium scour depth increases with decrease in opening ratio and with increase in sediment size for gravels. But the curves of scour depth versus sediment size have considerable sag at the transition of sand and gravel. The scour depth decreases with increase in densimetric Froude number, for larger opening ratios, and increases with increase in approaching flow depth at lower depths. However, it becomes independent of approaching flow depth at higher flow depths. The effect of sediment gradation on scour depth is pronounced for nonuniform sediments, which reduce scour depth significantly due to the formation of armor layer in the scour hole. Using the continuity and energy equations, a simple analytical model for the computation of clear-water scour depth in long contractions is developed with and without sidewall correction for contracted zone. The models agree satisfactorily with the present and other experimental data. Also, a new empirical equation of maximum equilibrium scour depth, which is based on the experimental data at the limiting stability of sediments in approaching channel under clear-water scour, is proposed. The potential predictors of the maximum equilibrium scour depth in long contractions are compared with the experimental data. The comparisons indicate that the equations given by Komura and Lim are the best predictors among those examined.