FAULT-TOLERANT DATA SHARING FOR HIGH- LEVEL GRID PROGRAMMING A HIERARCHICAL STORAGE ARCHITE.pdf

FAULT-TOLERANT DATA SHARING FOR HIGH- LEVEL GRID PROGRAMMING: A HIERARCHICAL STORAGE ARCHITECTURE Marco Aldinucci, Marco Danelutto Computer Science Department, University of Pisa Largo Bruno Pontecorvo 3, 56127 Pisa, Italy aldinuc@di.unipi.it Gabriel Antoniu, Mathieu Jan INRIA Rennes Campus de Beaulieu, 35042 Rennes, France gabriel.antoniu@irisa.fr, mathieu.jan@irisa.fr Abstract Enabling high-level programming models on grids is today a major challenge. A way to achieve this goal relies on the use of environments able to transparently and automatically provide adequate support for low-level, grid-specific issues (fault-tolerance, scalability, etc.). This paper discusses the above approach when applied to grid data management. As a case study, we propose a 2-tier software architecture that supports transparent, fault-tolerant, grid-level data sharing in the ASSIST programming environment (University of Pisa), based on the JuxMem grid data sharing service (INRIA Rennes). Keywords: Grid, shared memory, High-level programming, memory hierarchy, P2P. 21. Introduction Grid computing has emerged as an attempt to provide users with the illusion of an infinitely powerful, easy-to-use computer, which can solve very complex problems. This very appealing illusion is to be provided (1) by relying on the aggregated power of standard (so, inexpensive), geographically distributed resources owned by multiple organizations; (2) by hiding as much as possible the complexity of the distributed infrastructure to users. However, the current status in most software grid infrastructures available today is rather far away from this vision. When designing programs able to run on such large-scale platforms, programmers often need to explicitly take into account resource heterogeneity, as well as the unreliability of the distributed infrastructure. In this context, the grid community converges towards a consensus about the need for a high-level programming model, whereas most of the grid-specif