Multicriteria Aspects of Grid Resource Management

Grid resource management systems should take into consideration the application requirements and user preferences on the one hand and virtual organizations’ polices on the other hand. In order to satisfy both users and resource owners, many metrics, criteria, and constraints should be introduced to formulate multicriteria strategies for Grid resource management problems.In this chapter we argue that Grid resource management involves multiple criteria and as such requires multicriteria decision support. We discuss available multicriteria optimization techniques and methods for user preference modeling. The influence of the Grid nature on the resource management techniques used is also emphasized, including issues such as dynamic behavior, uncertainty, and incomplete information. We present three aspects of the resource management process: (i) providing the resource management system with all the necessary information concerning accessible resources, application requirements, and user preferences, (ii) making decisions that map tasks to resources in the best possible way, and (iii) controlling the applications and adapting to changing conditions of the Grid environment.