InterGrid: Internetworking Islands of Grids
Building a Virtualized Distributed Computing Infrastructure by Harnessing Grid and Cloud Technologies
InterGrid is inspired by the peering agreements established between Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the Internet, through which ISPs agree to allow traffic into one another's networks. The architecture of InterGrid relies on InterGrid Gateways (IGGs) that mediate access to resources of participating Grids. The InterGrid also aims at tackling the heterogeneity of hardware and software within Grids. The use of virtualization technology can ease the deployment of applications spanning multiple Grids as it allows for resource control in a contained manner. In this way, resources allocated by one Grid to another are used to deploy virtual machines. Virtual machines also allow the use of resources from Cloud computing providers.
![Abstract view of the software layers of the InterGrid](images/intergrid_layers.jpg)
The InterGrid aims to provide a software system that allows the creation of execution environments for various applications (a) on top of the physical infrastructure provided by the participating Grids (c). The allocation of resources from multiple Grids to fulfil the requirements of the execution environments is enabled by peering arrangements established between gateways (b).
![Application deployment](images/app_deployment.jpg)
A Grid has pre-defined peering arrangements with other Grids, managed by IGGs and, through which they co-ordinate the use of resources of the InterGrid. An IGG is aware of the terms of the peering with other Grids; selects suitable Grids able to provide the required resources; and replies to requests from other IGGs. Request redirection policies determine which peering Grid is selected to process a request and a price at which the processing is performed. An IGG is also able to allocate resources from a Cloud provider. Figure 2 illustrates a scenario where an IGG allocates resources from an organisation's local cluster for deploying applications. Under peak demands, this IGG interacts with another that can allocate resources from a cloud computing provider.
Although applications can have resource management mechanisms of their own, we consider a case where the resources allocated by an application are used for the creation of a Distributed Virtual Environment (DVE), which is a network of virtual machines that runs isolated from other DVEs. Therefore, the allocation and management of the acquired resources is performed on behalf of the application by a component termed DVE Manager.
The Team Members
- Rajkumar Buyya (Chief Investigator)
- Jemal Abbawajy, Deakin University.
- Alexandre di Costanzo - adc AT csse.unimelb.edu.au
- Marcos Dias de Assunção - marcosd AT csse.unimelb.edu.au
- Mohsen Amini - mohsena AT csse.unimelb.edu.au
Active Members:
Publications
- Marcos Dias de Assuncao, Alexandre di Costanzo and Rajkumar Buyya, Evaluating the Cost-Benefit of Using Cloud Computing to Extend the Capacity of Clusters, Proceedings of the 18th International Symposium on High Performance Distributed Computing (HPDC 2009, ACM Press, New York, USA), Munich, Germany, June 11-13, 2009.
- Marcos Dias de Assuncao and Rajkumar Buyya, Architectural Elements of Resource Sharing Networks, The Handbook of Research on Scalable Computing Technologies, IGI Global, 2009 (in print).
- Marcos Dias de Assuncao and Rajkumar Buyya, Performance Analysis of Allocation Policies for InterGrid Resource Provisioning, Information and Software Technology, Elsevier, Volume 51, Issue 1, pp. 42-55, Jan. 2009.
- Marcos Dias de Assuncao and Rajkumar Buyya, Performance Analysis of Multiple Site Resource Provisioning: Effects of the Precision of Availability Information, Fifteenth International Conference on High Performance Computing (HiPC 2008), pp. 157-168, Bangalore, India, 17-20 Dec. 2008.
- Marcos Dias de Assuncao and Rajkumar Buyya, A Cost-Aware Resource Exchange Mechanism for Load Management across Grids, Fourteenth International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems (ICPADS 2008), pp. 213-220, Melbourne, 8-10 Dec. 2008.
- Marcos Dias de Assuncao, Rajkumar Buyya and Srikumar Venugopal, InterGrid: A Case for Internetworking Islands of Grids, Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience (CCPE), Volume 20, Issue 8, pp. 997-1024, Wiley Press, New York, June 2008.
- Marcos Dias de Assuncao, Werner Streitberger, Torsten Eymann, and Rajkumar Buyya, Enabling the Simulation of Service-Oriented Computing and Provisioning Policies for Autonomic Utility Grids, 4th International Workshop on Grid Economics and Business Models (GECON 2007). Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Volume 4685, pp. 136-149, Rennes, France. August, 2007.