Designing Service-Based Resource Management Tools for a Healthy Grid Ecosystem

We present an approach for development of Grid resource management tools, where we put into practice internationally established high-level views of future Grid architectures. The approach addresses fundamental Grid challenges and strives towards a future vision of the Grid where capabilities are made available as independent and dynamically assembled utilities, enabling run-time changes in the structure, behavior, and location of software. The presentation is made in terms of design heuristics, design patterns, and quality attributes, and is centered around the key concepts of co-existence, composability, adoptability, adaptability, changeability, and interoperability. The practical realization of the approach is illustrated by five case studies (recently developed Grid tools) high-lighting the most distinct aspects of these key concepts for each tool. The approach contributes to a healthy Grid ecosystem that promotes a natural selection of “surviving” components through competition, innovation, evolution, and diversity. In conclusion, this environment facilitates the use and composition of components on a per-component basis.