Resource Monitoring and Service Discovery in GeneGrid

GeneGrid is a Grid based bioinformatics project run by BeSC under the UK e-Science program and supported by the UK Department of Trade & Industry(DTI). It is a combined effort with commercial partners Fusion Antibodies and Amtec Medical. GeneGrid provides seamless integration of a myriad of heterogeneous applications and data sets that span multiple administrative domains and location across the globe, and present this to scientist through a simple user friendly interface. GeneGrid enables large-scale sharing of resources within a formal consortia of institutes and commercial partners (virtual organisation). In such an infrastructure, service providers need a publication mechanism so that they can provide information about the grid services and computational resources they offer and make changes as their services evolve. This paper describes the design, development, implementation and performance of one such mechanism called the GeneGrid Resource Manager (GRM) built upon the Belfast e-Science Grid Manager project.