Resource Management

The ``Grid,'' at least in theory, consists of a huge set of resources: OS's ( From Plan 9 to OS X ), hardware ( From PalmPilots to the Earth Simulator ), software ( From ``Hello World!'' to climate models ). This huge multifariousness leads to the obvious quandary. How do you find what you want? If you have only a very limited set of resources to which you have access, the problem does not exist. ( Henry Ford was the obvious champion of this mode of operation. ``You can have any color car, as long as it's black.'' ) However, the ``Grid'' allows users to access and almost endless ocean of resources. You the ``Grid'' user may have access to resources you didn't even know existed. So, the blinders of Mr. Henry Ford have been lifted, but the choices also blind with brightness. So, the question now is: ``How to choose?''.

GAT, from the depths of it's ``batcave'' comes to the rescue, a common theme in this guide. GAT has several abstractions which allow users and application programmers to have ``transparent'' access to this vast sea of resources which laying at their feet, begging to be utilized.

The key abstraction introduced to wade through this spoil of riches is the ResourceBroker. A resource is any element providing some capability and a broker is an agent who distributes or aggregates resources on the behalf of another. So, as one might guess, a ResourceBroker is a software abstraction that distributes or aggregates resources, and, as it turns out, this guess would be correct! Amazing. If one wishes to find a resource, be it software or hardware, one simply queries a ResourceBroker to find the apropos resource. Similarly, to reserve a resource one also does so through the intermediary of a ResourceBroker. Lets look at some of the details.

• Creating and Destroying a ResourceBroker
• Creating and Destroying a ResourceDescription
• Find Resources
• Reserve a Resource Using a ResourceDescription
• Reserve a Resource Using a Resource