An hierarchical policy-based architecture for integrated management of grids and networks

The management of the underlying network infrastructure, which supports the grid communications, is not proceeded through the same management systems used for the grid management. In this scenario, an integrated management of grids and networks could turn the maintenance processes easier. This paper proposes an hierarchical policy-based architecture, whose goal is to allow such desired integration, where grid policies are translated to network policies following mapping rules defined by network administrators. It also describes a prototype implemented based on the architecture.

1 Introduction

Due to the network requirements and the grid resource distribution, the implementation and management of a grid infrastructure is not a trivial task. Considering that, software libraries, called toolkits, were developed to provide the basic management services required to a proper grid maintenance [2] [1]. These toolkits provide basic services and try to reduce the initial work needed to install and manage a grid. Also, for the grid operation, the management of the network infrastructure is required because grid users access shared resources through the network. Therefore, it would be interesting to have an interaction between the grid toolkit and the network management in order to allow, for instance, a network bandwidth reservation issued from the toolkit but executed by the network management.