Accounting in Grid Environments

This thesis proposes an accounting system architecture suitable for Grid environments. Furthermore, the design and implementation of a proof-ofconcept accounting system prototype, based on the proposed architecture, is presented. The prototype has been developed to satisfy the accounting needs of SweGrid, a Swedish national Grid. The accounting system leverages state-of-the-art Grid and Web Services technology and offers transparency to Grid users, while providing fine-grained end-to-end security. Furthermore, the accounting system is based on open Grid standardization efforts and provides a single point of integration with underlying Grid middleware, allowing non-intrusive deployment in different Grid environments. Initially driven by a need to tackle “larger-than-supercomputer” problems and enabled by improvements in networking technology, a new computing paradigm has emerged where geographically distributed computational resources can be connected to form a networked virtual supercomputer popularly referred to as a Grid. Grid technology promises resource sharing on a global scale. Whereas the Internet provides uniform access to HTML documents, the Grid provides its users with on-demand access to all kinds of computational resources in a dynamic, distributed environment. A Grid allows a dynamic collection of individuals and institutions, referred to as a Virtual Organization, to share computational resources in a flexible, secure and coordinated manner. The thesis investigates the area of Grid accounting, addressing challenges related to the problem of maintaining a Grid-wide view of Grid users’ resource utilization. Accounting information can form a basis for evaluation and tracking of resource usage, Grid-wide enforcement of resource allocations and economic compensation. Collection and management of accounting information is important in any Grid environment, but in particular it is important to non-research organizations, which are not likely to go “on the Grid” unless they are paid for providing their resources.