The MicroGrid: a Scienti_c Tool for Modeling Computational Grids. Scientific Programming 8(3

The complexity and dynamic nature of the Internet (and the emerging Computational Grid) de-mand that middleware and applications adapt to the changes in conguration and availability of re-sources. However, to the best of our knowledge there are no simulation tools which support systematic exploration of dynamic Grid software (or Grid resource) behavior. We describe our vision and initial eorts to build tools to meet these needs. Our MicroGrid sim-ulation tools enable Globus applications to be run in arbitrary virtual grid resource environments, enabling broad experimentation. We describe the design of these tools, and their validation on micro-benchmarks, the NAS parallel benchmarks, and an entire Grid application. These validation experi-ments show that the MicroGrid can match actual experiments within a few percent (2 % to 4%).