Research on Scheduling Algorithm for Workflow-Based Grid Resource

The aim of this thesis is to design and implement a new Grid Resource Management methodology, where non-massive resources owners would be able to share their resources and integrate human collaboration across multiple domains regardless of network technology, operative platform or administrative domain.<br/>This thesis proposes a distributed and heuristic policy-based resource management architecture for large-scale Grids. The resource management architecture proposed herein is composed of four main building blocs: services management, resource discovery and monitoring, resource scheduling and jobs allocation and activation. The Grid Services Management (GSM) and Jobs Allocation and Activation (JAA) are supported by means of a Policy-based Grid Resource Management Architecture (PbGRMA). This architecture is able to identify service needs arising from diverse sources during the deployment and management of Grid Services, such as requirements demanded by customers, applications and network conditions. Afterwards, the PbGRMA merges these requirements into deployment policies for the corresponding Grid Services. The Grid Resource Discovery and Monitoring (GRDM) is supported by the introduction of the SNMP-based Balanced Load Monitoring Agents for Resource Scheduling (SBLOMARS), in which network and computational resources are monitored by distributed agents. This allows for a flexible, heterogeneous and scalable monitoring system. The Grid Resource Scheduling (GRS) is based on the Balanced Load Multi-Constrained Resource Scheduler (BLOMERS). This heuristic scheduler represents an alternate way of solving the inherent NP-hard problem for resource scheduling in large-scale distributed networks by means of the implementation of a Genetic Algorithm.<br/>Finally, based on the outcome of both the GRDM and GRS, the PbGRMA allocates the corresponding Grid Services by means of its interfaces with Globus ToolKit Middleware and Unix-based CLI commands along of any large-scale Grid Infrastructure. <br/>The synergy obtained by these components allows Grid administrators to exploit the available resources with predetermined levels of Quality of Service (QoS), reducing computational costs and makespan in resource scheduling while ensuring that the resource load is balanced throughout the Grid. The makespan of a schedule is the time required for all jobs to be processed when no one job could be interrupted during its execution and each node can perform at most one operation at any time.<br/>This new approach has been successfully tested in a real large-scale scenario such as Grid5000. The results presented along this Thesis show that our general solution is a reliable, flexible and scalable architecture to deploy and manage Grid Services in large-scale Grid Infrastructures. Moreover, the substitution of the heuristic algorithm approach used into the Grid Resource Scheduling (GRS) phase by other non-heuristics selection algorithms could make our solution useful in smaller Grid Infrastructures.

As the complexity of application system for enterprises, an important challenge is to dynamically schedule and integrate the heterogeneous and distributed services or activities to work cooperatively and efficiently. An effective technology to resolve the problem is grid service. A grid service built on both grid computing and web services technologies is an extended Web service. An application system for enterprises is a grid service composition that consists of a collection of grid services related by data and control flow. Therefore, there is a need for modeling and analyzing techniques and tools for reliable and effective grid service composition. The Petri net based method is an idea approach. in this paper, we use a colored dynamic timed Petri net (CDTPN) to model the grid service composition. The definition of CDTPN for grid service and an algorithm to construct a composite service are proposed. We give a definition of reachable service graph and an algorithm for constructing the reachable service graph of CDTPN. Finally, we discuss the correctness and effectiveness of the grid service composition by analyzing the reachable service graph.

In this paper, we present a Workflow-based grId portal for problem Solving Environment(WISE) which has been developed by integrating workflow, Grid and web technology to provide an enhanced powerful approach for problem solving environment. Workflow technology supports coordinated execution of multiple application tasks on Grid resources by enabling users to describe a workflow by composing many existing applications and new functions, and provides an easy powerful tool to create new Grid applications. We propose new Grid portal to allow us to use Grid resources with improved workflow patterns to represent various parallelisms inherent in parallel and distributed Grid applications and present Grid Workflow Description Language(GWDL) to specify our new workflow patterns. Also, We shall show that the MVC(Model View Control) design pattern and multi-layer architecture provides modularity and extensibility to WISE by separating the application engine control and presentation from the application logic for Grid services, and the Grid portal service from Grid service interface.KeywordsGrid ResourceGrid ServiceGrid ApplicationGlobus ToolkitRemote HostThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

The research activity accounted for in this Ph.D thesis belongs to the general field of electrical and electronic measurement. The attention is focused on the implementation of GRID services for performance assessing of digital wireless communication systems. The original contribution consists in the development of two original measurement methods, the former allows measuring the modulation quality of systems compliant with IEEE 802.16d-2004 standard by means of any hardware characterized by a enough sample rate and input band width, and the latter carries out reliability and efficiently the in-service measurements also in presence of in-channel interferences. The high computational burden experienced during the wide experimental phase by proposed methods has encouraged their implementation according to GRID Service paradigm. Respect to the classic Web Service, GRID Service provides the possibility of both sharing the proposed methods among researches and technicians who work on the same topics, and processing some proposed methods stages in parallel way on several calculus nodes, thus reducing the whole processing time. Differently from the normal GRID Service, the developed GRID Services involve the measurement instrumentation, such digital acquisition systems and waveform generator, other than the calculus nodes. Suitable strategies for discovering, accessing, setting the measurement instruments have to be provided for. To this aim, new GRID architecture has been proposed, which virtualizes the measurement instruments into new components, namely instrumentation devices, and makes use of classic mechanisms already presented in GRID architecture, such as PBS scheduler, for dealing with the instruments discovery issue. To take advantage from the proposed GRID Services, a proper web portal is also implemented. An intense experimental phase is executed for assessing the methods and GRID Services performance by applying emulated and real communication signals. Measurement results are analyzed and compared to those achievable through the application of existing methods and/or instrument available on the market. Particular attention is also made to the processing time measurement of GRID Service with respect to a sequential implementation, in order to evidence the gains provided by a parallel implementation.

Many important scientific and engineering problems may be solved by combining multiple applications in the form of a Grid workflow. We consider that for the wide acceptance of Grid technology it is important that the user has the possibility to express requirements on Quality of Service (QoS) at workflow specification time. However, most of the existing workflow languages lack constructs for QoS specification. In this paper we present an approach for high level workflow specification that considers a comprehensive set of QoS requirements. Besides performance related QoS, it includes economical, legal and security aspects. For instance, for security or legal reasons the user may express the location affinity regarding Grid resources on which certain workflow tasks may be executed. Our QoS-aware workflow system provides support for the whole workflow life cycle from specification to execution. Workflow is specified graphically, in an intuitive manner, based on a standard visual modeling language. A set of QoS-aware service-oriented components is provided for workflow planning to support automatic constraint-based service negotiation and workflow optimization. For reducing the complexity of workflow planning, we introduce a QoS-aware workflow reduction technique. We illustrate our approach with a real-world workflow for maxillo facial surgery simulation.

Large-scale cooperation support for learners becomes even more important, when e-Learning is implemented in scalable, open, dynamic and heterogeneous environment. We have designed grid architecture and implemented grid middleware and higher CSCW services for establishing collaborative platform for e-Learning. A Learning Assessment Grid, abbreviated as LAGrid, is built on top of these services. This paper introduces the layered LAGrid architecture and presents how to implement grid middleware to support collaborative platform for e-Learning using Web services technologies. The work shows service-oriented grid middleware layer provides a good middleware platform for collaborative applications in large-scale cross-organization environment.

Grid technology is widely used in recent years, it has solved the real sharing of resources, make each node of unified command and use of resources, the information grid is on the basis of computational grid, using data mining. Information fusion and search engine technology and building are advantageous for the collection and sharing of grid resources. The goal to create a build on OS and Web is based on the new generation of Internet information platform. In this platform, the distribution of the information processing is the collaboration and intelligent. Focus crawler sets according to the target subject. In the form of intelligent collection topics come from the Web page, and then adopt the method of machine learning. The information retrieval on the collected information intelligent need process and analyze. Finally, the effective retrieval way is to meet the demand of the user's information retrieval.

A Scheduler based on Resource Competition for Parameter Sweep Workflow

Electronic government system of civil aviation is a complex project, involving multiple e-government application modules of construction. It's beneficial for the e-government system integration to establish the unity basic framework. Therefore, this paper analysis the media, events, information flow, capital flow in civil aviation e-government, according to the different application environment to establish the framework, and then combined with the civil aviation operation characteristics to construct a integrated aviation e-government information interaction application platform based on SOA. This platform using XML, component technology, Web service technology and workflow technology, civil aviation B2B scheme to analysis the goal of civil aviation e-government, design the whole system framework, and discusses the realization and main technology of civil aviation e-government system furtherly.

The grid and Web service are converging as the WSRF is proposed. The grid not only provides the computing and resources sharing pools, but also supports the electronic business and enterprise applications integration with the composition of grid service. The paper presents a novel semantic composition method and adaptive scheduling algorithm based on grid workflow, which can benefit from the workflow architecture in the composition, visualization, verification, scheduling, execution and monitoring. The method can address semantic issues and automate the composition of grid service, and the algorithm can improve scheduling efficiency when the composite grid service is executed in the grid environment. According to the simulation experiment on the prototype implemented on the GT3, the composition and scheduling have the advantage of efficiency and effectiveness.

The open grid services infrastructure (OGSI) defines a distributed system framework by integrating grid and Web services technologies to facilitate the sharing of various resources, which result in grid service. Grid service inherits the features from Web service, aiming at enabling interoperability among heterogeneous grid application. However, in the open grid services architecture (OGSA), grid services are isolated, it is difficult building a grid service management framework which can work across organizations. Based on BPEL4WS, this paper proposes an agent-oriented grid service modeling framework to address the difficulties in developing grid applications based on grid services.

Workflow technology has been adopted in scientific domains to orchestrate and automate scientific processes in order to facilitate experimentation. Such scientific workflows often involve large data sets and intensive computation that necessitate the use of the Grid, which offers supercomputing power through shared distributed resources. To execute a scientific workflow in the Grid, tasks within the workflow that represent steps in the scientific process are assigned to Grid resources for execution. To ensure efficient execution of the workflow, Grid workflow scheduling is required to manage the allocation of Grid resources. Although many Grid workflow scheduling techniques exist, they are mainly designed for the execution of a single workflow. This is not the case with parameter sweep workflows which focus on parametric study and parameter optimisation. A parameter sweep workflow is executed numerous times with different input parameters in order to determine the effect of each parameter combination on the experiment. While executing multiple instances of a parameter sweep workflow in parallel can reduce the time required for the overall execution, this execution introduces new challenges to Grid workflow scheduling. Not only is a scheduling algorithm that is able to manage multiple workflow instances required, but this algorithm also needs the ability to schedule tasks across multiple workflow instances judiciously, as tasks may require the same set of Grid resources. Without appropriate resource allocation, resource competition problem could arise. In the thesis, we propose a new Grid workflow scheduling technique for parameter sweep workflow called the Besom scheduling algorithm. The scheduling decision of our algorithm is based on the resource dependencies of tasks in the workflow, as well as conventional Grid resource-performance metrics. In addition, the proposed technique is extended to handle loop structures in scientific workflows without using existing loop-unrolling techniques. We evaluate the Besom algorithm under a variety of conditions. A comparison between the simulation results of the Besom algorithm and of the three existing Grid workflow scheduling algorithms shows that the Besom algorithm is able to perform better than the existing algorithms for workflows that have complex structures and that involve overlapping resource dependencies of tasks. The Besom scheduling algorithm advances the ability to schedule parallel execution of parameter sweep workflows in the Grid. The outcomes of this thesis justify continuing research in this area to increase our understanding of scheduling multiple Grid workflow instances and to provide support to those involved in parametric study and scientific workflow management.

The past few years have witnessed an increasingly tight link between grid computing and Web services. But there is a large amount of biologic application which is not accessible as grid service in scientific computing domain. In this paper, by analyzing the character of computing job in grid, we describe the computing job as a set of abstract resource, and organize the grid resource as a resource view by request of computing job for resource in grid. We design a solution for wrapping the biologic application to service. This solution has been successfully applied to the development work of our project. Performance experiments show that the proposed wrap mechanisms bring about only slight efficiency loss

The monitoring of grid environments helps administrators and users keep track of the availability and loading of resources, and the management of resources is dependent on the monitoring of information data. There is not an efficient and consistent monitoring mechanism to the manipulation of devices, resources and services in Grid computing. We propose a novel monitoring framework used to gather and retrieve monitoring information of Grid environments. The monitoring system RMCS integrates and extends the existing monitoring system using service-oriented mechanism and the common information model CIM. The RMCS defines a hierarchical structure of monitoring resources, and customizes the monitoring parameters and the display way. The adoption of CIM-based monitoring service enables compatible with other grid services such as grid portal, transaction or resource management and charging. The investigation shows that this monitoring approach provides the scalable monitoring capabilities, enables to exchange information in an unrestricted and flexible way, and improves grid performance and utilization.

We present a description of our ongoing efforts to utilize the services provided over the World Wide Web to advance the field of computational quantum chemistry utilized for detailed study of the electronic structure and properties of molecular systems, as well as the dissemination of results both for research and education. There are several facets of these efforts: (1) development of a computational chemistry web portal (2) development of an XML schema based on output data of electronic structure software, and (3) development of database and associated query tools that will serve as a basis for storage, retrieval, and manipulation of QM data in uniquely new ways. These efforts are distinctly coupled together through our creation of a workflow of web services, using grid resources.