A model for usage policy-based resource allocation in grids

Challenging usage policy issues can arise within virtual organizations (VOs) that integrate participants and resources spanning multiple physical institutions. Participants may wish to delegate to one or more VOs the right to use certain resources subject to local policy and service level agreements; each VO then wishes to use those resources subject to VO policy. How are such local and VO policies to be expressed, discovered, interpreted, and enforced? As a first step to addressing these questions, we develop and evaluate policy management solutions within a specialized context, namely scientific data grids within which the resources to be shared are computers and storage. We propose an architecture and recursive policy model, and define roles and functions, for scheduling resources in grid environments while satisfying resource owner and VO policies.