A Grid Service Matrix Model for Resource Scheduling in Grid Computing Environments

Abstract

A grid computer consists of shared computing resources that are presented to the user as a single powerful computing facility. The shared computing resources have independent autonomous ownership. The vision in grid computing is to make computing resources transparently available to a user without reference to the location or ownership of the resources. The challenge is to implement grid computing in a practical, equitable and efficient manner. We concentrate on the scheduling aspect of this problem. The grid scheduling problem has been approached in many ways including traditional queue based methods, market-based methods, and agent based methods. We propose a direct scheduling mechanism which is guided by quality of service (QoS) requirements. We describe our experiments where the QoS requirements, memory and processor time, guide the direct allocation of resources to users and applications using a service matrix data structure. We present our simulation results and demonstrate that the overall efficiency of allocations is bounded due to residual service requests or service offers that remain unprocessed in the service matrix. The service matrix grid scheduling methodology that we have developed addresses some of the challenges faced in grid computing environments such as loss of scalability in centralized control.