This chapter first presents taxonomies on approaches for resource allocation across resource sharing networks such as Grids. It then examines existing systems and classifies them under their architectures, operational models, support for the life-cycle of virtual organisations, and resource control techniques. Resource sharing networks have been established and used for various scientific applications over the last decade. The early ideas of Grid computing have foreseen a global and scalable network that would provide users with resources on demand. In spite of the extensive literature on resource allocation and scheduling across organisational boundaries, these resource sharing networks mostly work in isolation, thus contrasting with the original idea of Grid computing. Several efforts have been made towards providing architectures, mechanisms, policies and standards that may enable resource allocation across Grids. A survey and classification of these systems are relevant for the understanding of different approaches utilised for connecting resources across organisations and virtualisation techniques. In addition, a classification also sets the ground for future work on inter-operation of Grids.
TopIntroduction
Since the formulation of the early ideas on meta-computing (Smarr & Catlett, 1992), several research activities have focused on mechanisms to connect worldwide distributed resources. Advances in distributed computing have enabled the creation of Grid-based resource sharing networks such as TeraGrid (Catlett, Beckman, Skow, & Foster, 2006) and Open Science Grid (2005). These networks, composed of multiple resource providers, enable collaborative work and sharing of resources such as computers, storage devices and network links among groups of individuals and organisations. These collaborations, widely known as Virtual Organisations (VOs) (Foster, Kesselman, & Tuecke, 2001), require resources from multiple computing sites. In this chapter we focus on networks established by organisations to share computing resources.
Despite the extensive literature on resource allocation and scheduling across organisational boundaries (Butt, Zhang, & Hu, 2003: Grimme, Lepping, & Papaspyrou, 2008; Iosup, Epema, Tannenbaum, Farrellee, & Livny, 2007; Ranjan, Rahman, & Buyya, 2008; Fu, Chase, Chun, Schwab, & Vahdat, 2003; Irwin et al., 2006; Peterson, Muir, Roscoe, & Klingaman, 2006; Ramakrishnan et al., 2006; Huang, Casanova, & Chien, 2006), existing resource sharing networks mostly work in isolation and with different utilisation levels (Assunção, Buyya, & Venugopal, 2008; Iosup et al., 2007), thus contrasting with the original idea of Grid computing (Foster et al., 2001). The early ideas of Grid computing have foreseen a global and scalable network that would provide users with resources on demand.
We have previously demonstrated that there can exist benefits for Grids to share resources with one another such as reducing the costs incurred by over-provisioning (Assunção & Buyya, in press). Hence, it is relevant to survey and classify existing work on mechanisms that can be used to interconnect resources from multiple Grids. A survey and classification of these systems are important in order to understand the different approaches utilised for connecting resources across organisations and to set the ground for future work on inter-operation of resource sharing networks, such as Grids. Taxonomies on resource management systems for resource sharing networks have been proposed (Iosup et al., 2007; Grit, 2005). Buyya et al. (2000) and Iosup et al. (2007) have described the architectures used by meta-scheduler systems and how jobs are directed to the resources where they execute. Grit (2005) has classified the roles of intermediate parties, such as brokers, in resource allocation for virtual computing environments.
This chapter extends existing taxonomies, thus making the following contributions:
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It examines additional systems and classifies them under a larger property spectrum namely resource control techniques, scheduling considering virtual organisations and arrangements for resource sharing.
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It provides classifications and a survey of work on resource allocation and scheduling across organisations, such as centralised scheduling, meta-scheduling and resource brokering in Grid computing. This survey aims to show different approaches to federate organisations in a resource sharing network and to allocate resources to its users. We also present a mapping of the surveyed systems against the proposed classifications.