Using Overlay Networks to Build Operating System Services for Large Scale Grids

Abstract

Using grid resources to execute scientific applications requiring a large
amount of computing power is attractive but not easy from the user point of
view. Vigne is a grid operating system designed to provide users with a
simplified view of a grid. Vigne deals with the huge number of nodes in a
large-scale grid and with the nodes' dynamic behavior by using peer-to-peer
overlays as a keystone. In this paper, we show why it is highly desirable to
use structured and unstructured peer-to-peer overlays for building the
high-level services of Vigne grid operating system. To show the interest of
our approach, we detail the features of two Vigne services built on top of
peer-to-peer overlays. We also present experimental results obtained on the
Grid'5000 testbed showing the scalability of the Vigne infrastructure based on
overlays and its practical interest for the implementation of Vigne
distributed services.