An asynchronous middleware for Grid resource monitoring

Resource management in a Grid computing environment raises several technical issues. The monitoring infrastructure must be scalable, flexible, configurable and adaptable to support thousands of devices in a highly dynamic environment where operational conditions are constantly changing. We propose to address these challenges by combining asynchronous communications with reflective component-based technologies. We introduce DREAM (Dynamic REflective Asynchronous Middleware), a Java component-based message oriented middleware. Asynchronous communications are used to achieve the scalability and flexibility objectives, whereas the reflective component technology provides the complementary configurability and adaptability features. We argue that this infrastructure is a viable approach to build a resource monitoring infrastructure for Grid computing. Moreover, DREAM makes the monitoring logic accessible from ME application servers. This allows the monitoring information to be presented as a Grid service and to integrate within the Open Grid Software Architecture. Copyright (C) 2004 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.