Resource Provisioning in Alchemi.NET

Abstract

Grid systems and applications aim to integrate, virtualize, and manage resources and services within distributed, heterogeneous, dynamic “Virtual Organizations”. It offers untapped processing cycles from networks of computers spanning vast geographical boundaries. Grid is presented to the user as a single, unified resource. Grid Resource management is a key concern for implementing effective Grid middleware and shielding application developers from low level details. This process can include searching multiple administrative domains to use a single machine or scheduling a single job to use multiple resources at a single site or multiple sites. Grid Resource Management involves, resource discovery, information gathering about resources and selection of the best resource and finally job execution. Job execution includes a process of selecting appropriate resources, reserving those resources and finally mapping application for execution onto those resources known as Resource Provisioning. Resource Provisioning system is a system for creating and managing multiple instances of a utility service within a shared IT (information technology) infrastructure. A service provider maintains an aggregation of resources that can be allocated to different services. Customers request access to services of particular types, and instances of these services are provisioned to meet their needs. In creating the provisioning, requests are made to resource managers (RMs) that keep track of certain types of resources, their allocations, and availabilities. The RM provides resources, which are appropriately configured to meet the functionality and performance requirements of the particular service being supported. In this thesis work, a technique for registration, automatic deployment and on-demand provisioning of application components (activities) i.e. scavenging of idle resources that can be used to build Grid applications for Alchemi .Net has been proposed. This technique helps to implement provisioning application as a web-service that also helps to decouple Grid application from any particular middleware APIs.