Network resource selection for data transfer processes in scientific workflows

Quality of the service (QoS) plays an important role in the life-cycle of scientific workflows for composing and executing applications. However, the quality of network services has so far rarely been considered in composing and executing scientific workflows. Currently, scientific applications tune the execution quality neglecting network resources, and by selecting only optimal software services and computing resources. One reason is that IP-based networks provide few possibilities for workflow systems to manage the service quality, and limit or prevent bandwidth reservation or network paths selection. We see nonetheless a strong need from scientific applications, and network operators, to include the network quality management in the workflow systems. In this paper, we discuss our ongoing research on this issue and present a semantic based solution to searching network resources with awareness of QoS requirements. The solution aims at complementing existing workflow systems on selecting network resources in the context of workflow composition, scheduling and execution when advanced network services are available. Our research is conducted in the context of the CineGrid project.