An Economy Based Storage Grid Federation with a Decentralized Scheduling Technique

Abstract

With the evolution of Grid technology, it has become possible to connect resources (service providers or consumers) topologically spread apart falling in different administrative domains. The users or applications submitting multiple storage requests are managed through scheduling arrangements in a centralized manner. The distribution and allocation of the storage requests therefore occurs oblivious of the efficiency and engagements of the underlying resources. The authors propose a model of Storage Grid Federation motivated by concept of Grid Federation constituted of computational resources formulated through peer level coupling. The algorithm is designed for the resource management with a decentralized approach incorporating policies capable of resource monitoring through entities like Storage Federation Agents so as to yield to higher autonomy. The preferences of the consumers are well accessed such as budget, negotiation policies, a specific need of storage and protocol of the organization they belong to. The design includes penal clause and discounts in accordance to a service level agreement while offering Storage Grid services at specified time in future. The goal is achieved through creating number of Storage Federation Agents that are competent to cater to local Resource Service Provider policies. The SFA resource managers are competent to ensure load balancing before distribution of storage requests. The proposed algorithm allows negotiation with SFAs in addition to the local and remote SFAs falling in different domains and hence improving upon its previous federation model based on computational resources only.