Resource discovery is a key issue in Grid environments, since applications are usually constructed by composing hardware and software resources that need to be found and selected. Classical approaches to Grid resource discovery, based on centralized or hierarchical approaches, do not guarantee scalability in large-scale, dynamic Grid environments. On the other hand, the Peer-to-Peer (P2P) paradigm is emerging as a convenient model to achieve scalability in distributed systems and applications. This presentation will describe a protocol and an architecture that adopt a pure-decentralized P2P approach to support resource discovery in OGSA-compliant Grids. In particular, the P2P protocol uses appropriate message buffering and merging techniques to make Grid Services effective as a way to exchange discovery messages in a P2P fashion. Current approaches to resource discovery in Grid environments and possible research directions in this field will be also discussed.
Paolo Trunfio received his PhD in systems and computer engineering at the University of Calabria, Italy, in 2005. He is currently an assistant professor of computer engineering at the same university. His research interests include distributed systems, grid computing, web services, and peer-to-peer systems.
