Deployment of grid gateways using virtual machines

Grid middleware is enabling resource sharing between computing centres across the world and sites with existing clusters are eager to connect to the Grid using middleware such as that developed by the LHC Computing Grid (LCG) project. However; the hardware requirementsfor access to the Grid remain high: a standard LCG Grid gateway re-quiresfour separate servers. Wepropose the use of Virtual Machine technology to run multiple instances, al-lowing a ful l Grid gateway to be hosted on a single com-puter. This would significantly reduce the hardware, instal-lationand management commitments required of a site that wants to connect to the Grid. In this paper, we outline the architecture of a single-computer Grid gateway. We eval-uate implementations of this architecture using two popu-lar open-source Xen and User-Mode Our results show that Xen for installa-tion tasks and standard gateway operations. is similar to that of sites running multi-computer gateways, making it easy to keep site installation nised. Our VM gateway architecture provides a low-cost entrypath to the Grid and will be of interest to many insti-tutionswishing to connect their existingfacilities