GRIDCC: A Real-time Grid workflow system with QoS

The over-arching aim of Grid computing is to move computational resources from individual institutions where they can only be used for in-house work, to a more open vision of vast online ubiquitous `virtual computational' resources which support individuals and collaborative projects. A major step towards realizing this vision is the provision of instrumentation - such as telescopes, accelerators or electrical power stations - as Grid resources, and the tools to manage these resources online. The GRIDCC project attempts to satisfy these requirements by providing the following four co-dependent components; a flexible wrapper for publishing instruments as Grid resources; workflow support for the orchestration of multiple Grid resources in a timely manner; the machinery to make reservation agreements on Grid resources; and the facility to satisfy quality of service (QoS) requirements on elements within workflows. In this paper we detail the set of services developed as part of the GRIDCC project to provide the last three of these components. We provide a detailed architecture for these services along with experimental results from load testing experiments. These services are currently deployed as a test-bed at a number of institutions across Europe, and are poised to provide a 'virtual lab' to production level applications.