On Importance of Service Level Management in Grids

The recent years saw an evolution of Grid technologies from early ideas to production deployments. At the same time, the expectations for Grids shifted from idealistic hopes — buoyed by the successes of the initial testbeds — to disillusionment with available implementations when applied to large-scale general purpose computing. In this paper, we argue that a mature e-Infrastructure aiming to bridge the gaps between visions and realities cannot be delivered without introducing Service Level Management (SLM). To support this thesis, we present an analysis of the Grid foundations and definitions that shows that SLM-related ideas were incorporated in them from the beginning. Next, we describe how implementing SLM in Grids could improve the usability and user-experience of the infrastructure – both for its customers and service providers. We also present a selection of real-life Grid application scenarios that are important for the research communities supported by the Grid, but cannot be efficiently supported without the SLM process in place. In addition, the paper contains introduction to SLM, a discussion on what introducing SLM to Grids might mean in practice, and what were the current efforts already applied in this field.