QoS-Based Decision Services in Grids

Complex and mission-critical applications require the use of distributed environments, which will allow their execution in a reliable and cost-efficient way. Grid environments made this case feasible by providing heterogeneous resources. Nevertheless, quality of service (QoS) aspects are regarded as fundamental for enabling the execution of business applications in grids. In that frame, we introduce decision services that establish QoS guarantees and fulfill the applications´ requirement on becoming QoS-aware. A workflow mapping component is presented here that allows the mapping of workflow processes to grid provided services, assuring at the same time end-to-end provision of QoS based on user-defined parameters and preferences; and a resource brokering service that reconciles the interests of providers and consumers based on service level agreements (SLAs), which are negotiated between service providers and the resource broker. We also present a comparison of these decision services.